America’s largest and, for some owners, only option for a home insurer is pulling back its operations in the state of California, leaving many with no more options to secure their property’s value amid wildfire danger in the state reaching new heights.
As Statista’s Katharina Buchholz reports, after saying in May of last year that it wasn’t giving out any new California contracts, news broke in March that 72,000 State Farm policies in the state would not be renewed.
Now, a filing shows which zip codes these homes are in.
In many affected places, State Farm had been the only or only major insurer still operating, according to reporting by CBS. Most companies had already deemed the locations uninsurable due to the danger of wildfires whose flames have been fanned by climate change.
Among the zip codes in question are many wealthy neighborhoods in the hillsides in or near Los Angeles, for example Pacific Palisades, Bel Air or Calabasas. Others, like Brentwood or Tarzana, also include more modest stretches.
However, the policies most likely to be discontinued are for those homes in hilly areas more likely to come at a premium in or near big metros but also more likely to fall victim to a fire.