First Fire-Resilient Community Is Built in California

A homebuilder has created the first fire-resilient community in California, less than three months after a series of ferocious wildfires ripped through Los Angeles County.

The community sits just outside San Diego, built by KB Home, one of the largest homebuilders in the country. Dixon Trail in Escondido near Dixon Lake is a development of 64 single-family homes. Twenty of the homes have been sold, and five have been delivered to customers.

“This is the first time this has been done on a community scale,” Steve Ruffner, KB Home regional general manager for San Diego, Orange County, and Long Beach, tells Realtor.com®.

The development, touted as “the nation’s first Wildfire Prepared Neighborhood,” is certified to the Wildfire Prepared Home™ Plus standard developed by the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety, a nonprofit organization formed by the property-casualty insurance industry.

Ruffner says Dixon Trail’s sales team is reporting keen interest from prospective buyers in the development’s fire-resiliency.

“Single-family detached homes in this area are attractive to a buyer, anyway,” he says. “But when they learn about this, it really reinforces the buyer’s decision. Between that and our Energy Star certification, it’s icing on the cake and closes the deal for them.

“It’s a peace of mind thing,” he adds, noting that all of the new homeowners have been able to get insurance, “which in this state is a real achievement.”

The single-family homes start at $1 million and top out at $1.27 million. The median home list price in the area is $879,950.

What makes the homes ‘Wildfire Prepared’?

The homes are built to be protected from the three major sources of conflagration: flying embers, flames, and radiant heat.

Los Angeles saw plenty of examples of homes that seemed to “miraculously” survive the fires virtually unscathed while those around them perished.

This is because some homes are simply made to withstand fire much better. While no structure is absolutely fire-proof, one built with fire-resistant materials and designed with fire-resiliency in mind stand a much better chance of withstanding wildfire.

KB Home, which delivered 14,169 homes last year, built the Dixon Trail houses with noncombustible siding such as stucco and fiber cement, dual-tempered-glass windows, and noncombustible patios, doors, and roofing. Homes are spaced 10 feet apart to slow a fire.

Well-planned landscaping is an essential part of a fire-resistant design. Homes have a “noncombustible zone” with low-combustible vegetation at least 5 feet from the house.

There’s also a 5-to-30-foot “defensible space zone” around the house, where things like debris, fuel lines, and other structures like back-to-back fencing are moved. The underside of eaves is enclosed and gutters are covered, so embers and smoke can’t work their way into homes.

The Dixon Trail development was already underway when Ruffner saw a demonstration by IBHS at a builders conference last summer and decided the new community should pivot to adopt its stringent fire-mitigation standards.

The restructuring caused a monthlong delay, but Ruffner says “it was well worth it.” He credits the city of Escondido for going all-in and helping KB Home get whatever support it needed to complete the project to the IBHS standards.

This all happened long before the L.A. wildfires, which began in January.

“That was tragically apropos of what we were doing,” says Ruffner.

The future of fire-resistant homes

“With climate changes coming fast and furious to a number of communities in high-risk geographic regions, and more on the horizon for the entire country, we will need to do something to have new construction handle the risks of fire, wind, and the wild swings in extreme temperatures,” says fire damage and real estate investment expert Jessica Lauren, of Fire Damaged House Aid.

As one-third of all homes built in the U.S. are constructed in wildfire-prone areas, and 1 in 7 homeowners goes without insurance due to soaring premiums, and insurers pull out of extreme-weather-prone states like California and Florida, homebuilders will have no choice but to get inventive.

But higher costs have been a factor in building more fire-resistant developments, which are slow to take hold.

“I already see additional ‘fire-resistant’ building requirements being adopted in many communities currently at extreme risk, but these new requirements add costs to the final price sticker for housing,” says Lauren. “This will price out many who would normally be able to purchase a property.”

Dixon Trail will be a study on whether building more communities of this type is feasible and cost-effective.

Ruffner notes that the company was able to make cost adjustments as it went along, such as replacing the fire-treated heavy timber fencing required by IBHS standards with metal. The metal was cheaper and just as fire-resistant, and recycled metal can be used for a smaller carbon footprint.

Lauren warns that municipalities will have to adopt strict standards when it comes to pronouncing developments as “fire-resistant.”

Much as “green-washing” is common in the eco-friendly space, “fire-resistant-washing” could become a thing.

“As with everything in the building industry, there will be unscrupulous builders who will claim they do something that they don’t,” she says.