#9 Fire Mitigation Discounts
#9 Are there discounts for having mitigated our property?
Mitigation and home hardening increase the chances that your home will survive a wildfire, especially if your home is not very close to another home. A few insurers in Colorado currently offer discounts for mitigation and/or home hardening, although their definitions of what constitutes mitigation or hardening may vary. Once HB25-1182 goes into effect on July 1, 2026, insurers will need to consider mitigation and home hardening actions in their risk models; or if they don’t, they must offer discounts for those actions.
More Details: Mitigation refers to the reducing vegetation and creating defensible space; while home hardening is the use of fire-resistant building materials.
Mitigation involves trees, shrubs, grass and other flammable material like firewood igniting near your home and either directly igniting your home, or igniting it by radiant heat from the burning of a great deal of vegetation near your home. Mitigation involves creating “defensible space” through vegetation management around your home. Defensible space very literally means creating an area around your home where firefighters can safely make a stand as they attempt to save your house. Mitigation also decreases the chance of home ignition.
Home hardening involves such things as the use of building materials (especially on the roof, eaves, soffits, siding and decking) that are fire-resistant and therefore less likely to ignite as wind-borne embers from a nearby wildfire hit the house. It also includes the use of double or triple pane windows, less likely to be broken by the radiant heat generated by a nearby fire. There are a number of publications that will provide guidance about fire mitigation and home hardening, including Colorado State Forest Service, The Home Ignition Zone and Rotary Wildfire Ready, Take Control of Your Wildfire Risk: Defensible Space; Take Control of Your Wildfire Risk: Harden Your Home.
RotaryWildFireReady.com and its app provide extensive information online.
Currently, only a few, if any, insurance companies provide discounts for wildfire mitigation. However, this work can make a difference on whether your home survives a wildfire. It may even make a difference in whether you’ll get insurance. There is trend where insurers may require mitigation before writing a policy for a newly purchased home.
With the recent passage of Colorado HB25-1182, beginning in July, 2026, insurers must incorporate mitigation into their wildfire risk models or offer discounts for mitigation/home hardening work. The rules for implementing this legislation are being developed, so no more detail can be provided at this time.
Mitigation and home hardening can be expensive. If you want to prioritize your efforts, those actions that make the biggest difference, both in terms of survivability in a wildfire and access to insurance are: having a fire- and impact-resistant roof; and removing trees and shrubs that are close to the house (0-5 ft), and limbs that overhang the roof. You can then move to “intermediate zone,” 5-30 ft from your house (detailed guidance).
Some insurers are declining to insure properties solely based on the distance from dense forest or brush, due to the risk of catastrophic loss (i.e., loss of many homes in a single wildfire event). Mitigation and home hardening provide protection from home ignition due to embers coming from a fire in the brush or forest, although they don’t provide protection from direct ignition due to the radiant heat generated when a nearby (probably 10 feet or less away) house burns. The insurance industry says is waiting for real world data that links specific mitigation actions to wildfire outcomes (WUI Data Commons; discussed in FAQ #14 before deciding to provide discounts. The Colorado law that goes into effect July 2026 will require insurers to consider wildfire mitigation actions taken by homeowners.
A number of fire districts offer wildfire risk assessments for their residents, and a certificate if the homeowner completes all of the mitigation work identified in the evaluation. IBHS (Institute for Business and Home Safety, the research arm of the insurance industry) has a Wildfire Prepared and a Wildfire Prepared Plus certification program, which may become the certification recognized by the insurance industry. You should ask whoever does your certification evaluation whether they are using the Wildfire Prepared standards. Any certification you get should be shared with your insurer. A certificate of compliance with the standard could affect your insurability/cost of insurance and could be of benefit when you are selling your house. Mitigation will certainly increase the odds that your house survives a wildfire. However, mitigation efforts need to be maintained, so any certification you get will have an expiration date necessitating periodic re-inspections.