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December 12, 2023 - Insurance issues continue to remain top of mind for many REALTORS® involved in transactions, particularly those in or near designated fire hazard areas.
In September, California Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara announced a package of executive actions aimed at stabilizing California’s Insurance market.
One of the most important parts of the announcement was the commitment from the commissioner to expedite the introduction by the Dept. of Insurance of new rules for the review of climate catastrophe models that recognize the benefits of wildfire safety and mitigation actions at the state, local, and parcel levels. The use of such models has been something that insurance carriers need to be able to write policies in higher risk areas, given the higher fire risks that have been arising due to climate change.
The current rules only allow consideration of past fire occurrences over a long period, which many carriers feel does not allow them to capture the risk now entailed for fire. While there is hope such regulations will aid in stabilizing the market, the rulemaking process takes time and would likely not be in place until early next year so that there would be time for the insurance industry to respond.
California’s insurance woes are part of a nationwide problem for homeowners insurance. See here for example.
C.A.R. remains cautiously optimistic based on its discussions with other stakeholders in the process that these regulations will help to stabilize the insurance market.
FAIR Plan Delays
In those areas where private market homeowners insurance is not available for particular properties or areas, the FAIR plan remains the insurer of last resort. In 2022, FAIR plans had 3.1% share of the homeowner insurance market. However, that will be higher this year as FAIR has seen a significant increase in growth over the past year.
C.A.R. has heard from many practitioners of significant delays in the processing of FAIR insurance applications for coverage. Originally this was very limited, and C.A.R. reached out to FAIR to alert them of issues in certain areas. Now that the problem is more widespread, C.A.R. will be meeting with FAIR shortly to get more information on the source of these delays and to get more information for practitioners. As soon as we have more information, we will provide another update.
Homeowners insurance remains a challenging issue for REALTORS® and their clients. C.A.R. has prepared a number of resources for practitioners available on its Smart Zone website and will continue to provide additional information about FAIR and the insurance regulation process as it proceeds.
Source: C.A.R.
