What Is a Home Insurance Fire Score?
A rating of how likely your house is to have a fire claim, based on wiring, roof age, and fire station distance.
Free to compare
If your non-renewal letter mentions fire risk, this score or something like it was likely part of the decision. It looks beyond your house to things like nearby brush, drought conditions, and how spread out homes are in your area. You can't see the number, and no insurer has to share it. Updating old wiring or an aging roof can still help, since insurers who write in your area weigh your house along with the surroundings. Your declarations page and any inspection notes are the best clue to what drove it.
One insurer's fire score pulling your policy doesn't mean every insurer sees your house the same way. Some weigh roof age or wiring more heavily, others focus on how close the nearest fire station is or how dense the brush is nearby. A company that hasn't pulled back from your area may price the same risk very differently.
Can you raise your fire score before you apply again
There's no form to fill out or score report to request. Fire scores are built by modeling companies from public data, satellite imagery, and sometimes insurer-submitted details about your house, then sold to insurers who plug them into their own underwriting. You can't dispute a number you can't see. What you can do is fix the things that number is almost certainly measuring.
Roof age and material matter a lot. A roof with a few years left, or one made of wood shake, reads as higher risk than a newer roof in asphalt shingle or metal. Replacing it is expensive, so for most homeowners this isn't a quick fix before a deadline. Wiring is often more workable. If your house has aluminum wiring, knob and tube, or anything an inspector flagged as outdated, an electrician's update and a written summary of the work can matter when an insurer underwrites the house fresh.
Defensible space counts too, especially if you're in an area with brush or dry vegetation nearby. Clearing growth within several feet of the house, trimming trees back from the roofline, and keeping gutters free of debris are things you control regardless of what the surrounding land looks like. None of this changes how far away the fire station is, and it won't offset an insurer that has pulled back from writing anywhere in your zip code. But it does change how your specific house looks to an insurer who is still writing there.
When you apply again, bring documentation. Receipts for roof work, a permit for an electrical upgrade, photos of cleared brush around the house. An underwriter weighing your application against a model's output has more to work with when you hand them something concrete instead of leaving them to guess. It won't turn a high-risk area into a low-risk one, but it can be the difference between a decline and an approval, or between a standard price and one loaded for risk.
Does the fire score change the price too, not just approval
Yes, and that's separate from whether you get approved at all. An insurer who decides to write your house can still price it higher because of the same fire score that another insurer used to decline you. The score doesn't disappear once you're covered. It's one input among several, alongside your claims history, your credit-based insurance score where your state allows it, and the coverage amount you choose.
Two homeowners with similar houses on the same street can end up with different premiums from the same insurer. If one house has a newer roof and updated wiring and the other doesn't, the fire score behind each one likely reflects that, even though both sit the same distance from the fire station and face the same brush conditions. The parts of the score tied to your house specifically are the parts that move with the work you do. The parts tied to your location don't move at all.
Some insurers offer a lower price for homes with specific fire mitigation work, like a Class A fire-rated roof or ember-resistant vents, though this varies by company and isn't something you can assume applies to your policy. If you've done work to your house since the last time you were quoted, mention it specifically when you apply again rather than waiting for an underwriter to find it on their own. A roof replaced three years ago reads differently from one that's original to the house, but only if the insurer knows which one yours is.
The amount of coverage you ask for matters here too. If you're underinsured on the dwelling coverage, the part that pays to rebuild the house, raising that number to match actual rebuilding cost can sometimes work against a fire-related price increase. It gives the insurer more confidence that a total loss wouldn't leave them exposed to a dispute over the number. This isn't true for every carrier, and it won't offset a high fire score on its own. It's worth checking what your current dwelling limit is against what your contractor or the insurer's own replacement cost estimate says it would take to rebuild, since those two numbers are often further apart than homeowners expect.
Before you apply again
Pull your declarations page and check the roof's age and wiring type listed there. If either is outdated, get the work documented now. An underwriter can only weigh what you show them.
