Your wildfire score is now appealable. Most homeowners have no idea.

Published August 2026

There is a number attached to your home that helps decide what you pay for insurance, and until this year, you were never entitled to see it.

Insurers call it a wildfire risk score. It comes from a model: satellite imagery, vegetation data, slope, roof records, distance to fuel. It influences your premium, your renewal, and sometimes whether you're offered coverage at all. And like any model working from imagery and records, it can be wrong, scoring the roof you replaced as the old one, the trees you cleared as still standing.

As of October 1, 2026, Colorado law changes what you're entitled to do about it.

What Colorado's law actually gives you

House Bill 25-1182 (now section 10-4-124 of Colorado insurance law) applies to any insurer using a wildfire risk model, catastrophe model, or scoring method, including the FAIR Plan. It gives every homeowner four specific, enforceable rights:

1. See it, with an explanation. Your insurer must give you written notice of your wildfire risk score: what range it falls in, where your home sits in that range, and (this is the part that matters) the primary features of your property that drove the score and what impact each mitigation action could have on it. New applicants must receive the score within 15 days of a completed application. Renewals must include it. Non-renewal notices must include it.

2. Appeal it. If your score, your risk classification, or a mitigation discount you should be getting is inaccurate, you can appeal directly to your insurer with evidence. They must acknowledge your appeal in writing within 10 calendar days and issue a written decision within 30. If they deny it, the Insurance Commissioner can request the entire file.

3. Rescore it. This is the right almost nobody is talking about. If you complete mitigation work (defensible space, a Class A roof, ember-resistant vents), you do not have to wait for renewal to get credit. You can request a revised score, and your insurer must deliver it within 30 days. Finish the work in April; get the new score in May.

4. Claim it. Every insurer must now publish, on its public website, the specific mitigation actions that earn a discount, and the amount of the discount for each action. The price list is public. If you've done the work on their list, the discount isn't a favor. It's the law.

One more provision worth knowing: if an insurer's model doesn't account for property-specific and community-level mitigation, the law requires them to provide discounts to homeowners who can demonstrate the work anyway. Either the model credits you, or the discount does.

The deadlines are real, and they're yours

These rights arrive at your doorstep with your renewal: under Regulation 5-1-28, effective October 1, 2026, the score disclosure is sent with new policies and renewal offers issued on or after that date, which means across this renewal cycle, every insured homeowner in Colorado receives their first score notice. The regulation sets the shape of it: standardized notices, documentation standards, and appeal timelines.

The homeowners who engage during this first cycle set their baseline. Documented mitigation, a corrected score, a claimed discount: those carry forward into every future renewal.

What about other states?

California got here first. Its "Safer from Wildfires" framework (2022) requires insurers to recognize specific mitigation actions with premium credits, disclose wildfire risk scores, and provide an appeal path. Four years in, the honest lesson from California is this: the law didn't make wildfire insurance cheap, but it gave documented homeowners a lever: better eligibility, stronger renewals, real appeal outcomes. Colorado homeowners should expect the same shape: the payoff is in being coverable and credited, not in premiums falling across the board.

Washington came close. A 2026 bill requiring score disclosure, plain-language explanations, and appeal rights passed the state Senate 48-1 before stalling in a House committee. A vote that lopsided rarely stays stalled. Watch for it to return.

Everyone else: Arizona, Utah, New Mexico, Wyoming, Montana (all with major wildland-urban interface populations) currently offer no equivalent rights. Colorado's law is, right now, the most specific and actionable wildfire score law in the country. If you own a home in the Colorado WUI, you have consumer protections your counterparts in five neighboring states do not.

What to do with this, starting today

• Get your score. Don't wait for the renewal envelope. Your insurer is required to provide it. Ask now, in writing.
• Read the explanation like an audit. The notice must name the property features that drove your score. Check every one against reality. A feature that's outdated (the old roof, the uncleared slope you cleared) is the beginning of an appeal.
• Pull your carrier's discount list. It's on their website, by law, with dollar amounts. Compare it against work you've already done.
• Document everything. Dated photos, invoices, certifications. Under this law, documentation is the currency. "I did some landscaping" earns nothing; a dated, geotagged photo record earns a discount.
• Fix, then rescore. If real risk remains, the highest-impact items are usually the cheapest, and county grant money often covers them. When the work is done, file the rescore request. Thirty days, new score.

Where evenstate fits

evenstate exists to run all four of these rights for you, at once. We read your score notice and cross-examine it against your home's actual condition. We build appeals in your carrier's own filed language (submission-ready, so you send yours in one press) and track their 10-day and 30-day deadlines so nothing slips. When the score is right and the risk is real, we build the fix-it plan (grants first, financing only if needed) and ready your 30-day rescore the moment the work is done. And because scores get re-run, discounts quietly lapse, and shrubs grow back, your file stays yours — every answer dated and kept, ready the next time your insurer sends you something.

evenstate is an independent homeowner advocate. We are not an insurance company and no insurer pays us to influence your results. evenstate provides information and documentation support, not legal, tax, or financial advice. For tax credits, confirm eligibility with your tax professional.

Questions? support@evenstate.ai · Terms · Privacy