Insurance Agent · Los Angeles · Member since 2021 · 7 posts · 1 vote
Six months ago the FAIR Plan felt like a last-resort option. Lately it feels like it's just... the market for a lot of CA rental property, especially anything within a few miles of open space or on a hillside.
For those of you insuring single-family or small multifamily rentals in California right now: are you still finding standard-market carriers willing to write new business, or has everyone quietly ended up on FAIR Plan + a wrap/DIC policy for the gaps? And if you're layering a difference-in-conditions policy on top, what's that actually costing you combined vs. what a standard policy used to run? Are you actually able to fine coverage? If so what part of California are you in?
(Full disclosure — I'm a licensed public adjuster in CA, so I see the claims side of this more than the buying side, but I'm curious what you're all experiencing on renewals right now.)
Agent here. I write 5+ unit apartment buildings in LA, so my view is from the multifamily side rather than single-family.
Your read matches what shows up on hillside and near-open-space addresses. In the LA flats the picture is different. I pulled the fire hazard zone for 131 apartment buildings that sold in LA County over the last few months, and only 2 were inside a CAL FIRE or county hazard zone. For the other 129, the pressure comes from age (roughly 80% of LA County apartment buildings were built before 1978), water losses, and replacement cost. Older buildings like that tend to get pushed to surplus lines before the FAIR Plan becomes the answer.
A few things worth flagging for anyone reading this on renewal:
The FAIR Plan's 29.1% rate increase takes effect October 15, so the FAIR plus wrap math gets worse next month.
The wildfire non-renewal moratorium from the January 2025 fires ended in January, which is part of why more renewals are landing on the FAIR Plan now.
The FAIR Plan is fire-focused, so the combined setup needs a close look at water damage, liability, and loss of rents. On older rentals, water is the most common claim, so that gap matters more than people expect.
Curious what you're seeing on the claims side with FAIR plus DIC, especially on water losses where the two policies can point at each other.