Over 2.5M U.S. Properties Face Wildfire Risk With $1.4TN Exposed, Cotality Report Finds
New data reveals how fire spreads between homes — not just wildland blazes — identifying a critical opportunity for
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More than 2.5 million properties across the 10 most exposed states in the western U.S. carry a moderate or greater risk of wildfire. These properties represent a combined reconstruction cost value (RCV) of nearly $1.4 trillion, according to Cotality’s 2026 Wildfire Risk Report, released today.
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More than 2.5 million U.S. properties face moderate or greater wildfire risk, according to Cotality’s 2026 Wildfire Risk Report.
The report examines four key factors — risk assessment, property-level mitigation, insurance coverage, and dynamic landscape changes — that show how localized wildfire risk can escalate into broader exposure.
Wildfire risk stretches beyond California
While California carries the greatest share of exposure — 1.28 million at-risk properties representing $850 billion in RCV — wildfire risk is far from confined to one state. Almost half of all at-risk properties in the top 10 states (49.9%) sit outside California. Colorado and Texas alone represent nearly 560,000 at-risk properties and $252 billion in RCV — nearly matching the $277 billion carried by the remaining seven states combined. Oregon, Arizona, Idaho, New Mexico, Montana, Washington and Utah round out the 10 most exposed states.
Los Angeles remains the single largest exposed metro, with nearly 250,000 at-risk properties and $209 billion in RCV, but exposure extends well beyond California at the metro level, too. Four of the 10 most exposed metro areas sit outside the state: Austin, Texas leads that group with over 100,000 at-risk properties and $49.2 billion in RCV, followed by San Antonio, Denver, and Spokane, Washington.
Lack of conflagration assessment leaves insurers with a critical blind spot
Cotality’s modeling reveals how conflagration — when the fuel for fire moves from wildland into a neighborhood, spreading home to home — is reshaping the geography of wildfire exposure and revealing a significant vulnerability that traditional risk models can overlook.
According to Cotality, layering conflagration potential onto a traditional wildfire risk score can create a more holistic view of a property’s risk and add as many as 40 points to its risk score, pushing meaningful hazard risk deep into neighborhoods legacy maps previously classified as low risk.
According to Cotality’s property-level mitigation score — which weighs community protections, conditions on and around the property, and how fire-resistant a home is built — homes in the top 10% carry expected losses roughly 78% below the statewide average. The bottom 10% runs more than 10 times that average — about $47 in expected loss for every $1 on the best-prepared homes.
“Hearing that a property has a higher risk score than previously thought should not be thought of as a bad thing. It shows that new data and analytic capabilities create an opportunity to protect properties more effectively in the evolving wildfire environment we’re facing,” said Jamie Knippen, Cotality’s director of hazard insights. “This represents a significant opportunity for the entire market: it empowers carriers to move away from broad-brush risk assessments and safely expand their underwriting footprint, and actively rewards homeowners who invest in resilience.
“New property-level data now empowers insurers to identify what additional steps homeowners can take to mitigate the risk on their properties and leverage that additional resilience in their decision making. Expanding the assessment means going beyond terrain and vegetation to look at factors like structure density, building materials, wind patterns and ember exposure,” continued Knippen. “Carriers that account for these factors upfront can make sure homes are properly insured for the catastrophe they actually face — not just the forest fire, but the fire next door.”
To read the full Wildfire Risk Report, visit the Cotality website.
About Cotality
Cotality accelerates data, insights, and workflows across the property ecosystem to enable industry professionals to surpass their ambitions and impact society. With billions of data signals across the life cycle of a property, we unearth hidden risks and transformative opportunities for agents, lenders, carriers, and innovators. Get to know us at cotality.com.
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