n ON THE MARKET
INSURANCE WOES
The Camp Fire has made it more expensive to own a home in rural areas
BY Ryan Lundquist
SOMEONE IN NEVADA CITY RECENTLY
asked me if she should sell her house
because of rising fire insurance costs.
What might have sounded like a random
question five years ago is now a huge is-
sue for many local buyers and owners to
think about.
It hasn’t even been a year since the
Camp Fire tore through Paradise and sur-
rounding communities in Butte County
on Nov. 8, 2018, and it’s unreal to look
24
comstocksmag.com | August 2019
back and consider the devastation of 85
deaths and more than 14,000 homes de-
stroyed. It’s hard to even fathom that type
of mass destruction.
After a large natural disaster only
a couple hours away from us, our knee-
jerk reaction is to think the Sacramento
market would be flooded with fire refu-
gees, but that just hasn’t been the case.
After the devastating Tubbs Fire in parts
of Napa, Sonoma and Lake counties in
2017, we saw residents relocate here, but
there wasn’t a mass exodus as some ex-
pected. The same thing has seemed to
play out with the Camp Fire. Some peo-
ple have come to Sacramento to buy or
rent, but there hasn’t been a massive mi-
gration.
The market most affected by the
Camp Fire was Chico, because it’s only
about 15 miles from Paradise. An ap-
praiser colleague, Park Noble of Cali-