The $1.4 Trillion Threat Hiding in American Neighborhoods

Claire O'Connor had a hard time believing her Pacific Palisades, CA, home carried any real wildfire risk—even after her insurance policy was dropped in November 2024.“I mean, as if our house is going to burn down,” the Los Angeles real estate agent recalled telling her husband at the time. “So many houses would have to burn to get to our house.”The house wasn't in an isolated, rural area. Nor was it pressed up against a forest. It was in a traditional suburban neighborhood, surrounded by other homes.“We were pretty far from the hills,” she told Realtor.com® last year. “There was, like, rows and rows of houses before us.”Then, just two months later, the unthinkable happened. O’Connor lost her home in the Palisades fire, one of more than 4,700 homes partly or entirely destroyed.O'Connor is far from alone in assuming that neighborhoods offer some insulation from wildfire risk. But a new report from Cotality suggests that assumption can obscure a major source of danger: Once fire reaches a developed area, it can spread from structure to structure.Across the 10 states with the greatest number of properties facing moderate or greater wildfire risk, more than 2.5 million properties meet t...