If you are in escrow right now on a home anywhere near the South Orange County hillsides — Laguna Beach canyon, the Laguna Niguel ridgelines, Dana Point's upper streets, anywhere the brush comes close — stop reading listing photos and go get an insurance quote. Today, not next week.
Here is why the calendar matters.
What is happening on October 15
The California FAIR Plan — the insurer of last resort, the one you end up with when no admitted carrier will write your property — requested a 35.8% rate increase in September 2025. Regulators approved 29.1% as a statewide average, and that increase takes effect October 15, 2026, as reported by KQED.
It is the largest FAIR Plan increase in recent memory. For comparison, prior increases ran roughly 20% in 2019 and around 16% in both 2021 and 2023.
And the word average is doing a lot of work in that sentence. An average means some properties move less and some move more. Homes in high-wildfire-risk foothill and rural areas could see the wildfire portion of their premium climb dramatically, while some lower-risk urban properties may actually see reductions. Where your specific address falls on that curve is not something anyone can tell you from a map — you have to get it quoted.
How big the FAIR Plan has gotten
This is not a niche program anymore. As of June 2026 the FAIR Plan carried more than 675,000 policyholders and roughly $768 billion in total exposure. In late 2025 it reported 668,609 policies in force — up 146% since September 2022, with exposure up 230% over the same stretch.
After the January 2025 Los Angeles fires, the Plan paid roughly $3.5 billion on about 5,400 claims and collected a $1 billion assessment from admitted insurers. For scale: every assessment in the 1990s combined totaled $260 million.
That is the environment your escrow is sitting inside.
The part nobody reports: it is actually getting better
Here is the good news, and it is real.
FAIR Plan growth is slowing sharply — which is the clearest sign the admitted market is coming back. New residential policies ran 35,000 to 50,000 per quarter through 2024 and into 2025. By the third and fourth quarters of 2025 that had dropped to around 20,000 per quarter. In the first quarter of 2026, it was roughly 16,000 — about 2.4% quarterly growth.
People are leaving the FAIR Plan for real insurance again.
On May 1, 2026, the California Department of Insurance announced that nine carriers had committed to growing their California homeowners business: Travelers, AAA Southern California, Farmers, Mercury, CSAA, USAA, Horace Mann, Pacific Specialty, and California Casualty. Rate filings have moderated too — insurers are now seeking increases around 6.9%, down from the double-digit requests of prior years.
Travelers, notably, added increased discounts tied to wildfire mitigation. Which brings us to the actionable part.
What to actually do, in order
Day one of escrow, not day fifteen. Insurance is the single most common reason a South OC escrow gets ugly late. Order the quote the day your offer is accepted. If the property is uninsurable at a price you can live with, you want to know while your contingencies are still in place.
Ask the listing agent what the seller currently pays and who writes it. A seller on an admitted carrier at a reasonable premium is a very different property than a seller sitting on the FAIR Plan with a wraparound policy. This is a fair question and you are entitled to ask it.
Get quoted by an admitted carrier first — several of them. Do not assume that because the last house you looked at was FAIR Plan-only, this one is too. Risk scoring is address-specific, sometimes street-specific. With nine carriers actively growing here, the answer today may be different from the answer eighteen months ago.
Price the mitigation. Class A roofing, ember-resistant vents, and maintained defensible space now carry named, quantifiable discounts with real carriers. If the home already has them, that is a value you should be aware of. If it does not, get a number on what installing them costs and what it saves — that can become part of your negotiation on repairs or credits.
Build the premium into your qualifying math. Your insurance premium is part of your monthly housing payment for debt-to-income purposes. A premium that comes in far above the estimate can move you out of qualification on a tight file. I would rather find that in week one than in week four.
The honest summary
California's insurance market went through something genuinely bad and is now, measurably, recovering. But recovery is uneven, and there is a specific rate increase landing on October 15 that will hit the households with the fewest options hardest.
If you are buying in a fire-adjacent area of South Orange County this fall, insurance is not a closing-cost line item. It is a contingency-period investigation, and it deserves the same attention you give the home inspection.
If you want help thinking through a specific property, call me. I would rather spend an hour on this before you are in contract than fix it after.
Carly Zamani is the Founder and Broker/Owner of zRE Group in Laguna Niguel, California. CA DRE #02030224 | NMLS #1840970.
This article is general information and is not insurance advice. I am not a licensed insurance agent, and nothing here is a quote, a recommendation of any carrier, or a prediction of what any specific property will be charged. Consult a licensed insurance professional about your property. Sources: California FAIR Plan presentation to the Assembly Insurance Committee, January 2026; KQED reporting, August 11, 2026; California Department of Insurance announcement, May 1, 2026.
