39% of homes are in danger of burning in Utah—the country’s fastest growing state—compared with less than 10% in California, Washington and Oregon. In dollar terms, California has the most real estate in jeopardy, with $628 billion of homes facing high fire risk.
In Utah—America’s fastest growing state—two of every five homes (39.4%) face high fire risk. That’s a larger share than any other Western U.S. state analyzed by Redfin. Colorado and Idaho came in second and third place, with 19% and 14.4% of properties at high risk, respectively. Less than 10% of homes in the following states have high risk: Oregon, Nevada, California, Washington and Arizona.
That’s according to a Redfin analysis of county property records and risk scores from climate-data startup ClimateCheck. In this report, we focus on eight of the 11 states in the contiguous U.S. West: Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, Oregon, Utah and Washington. The remaining three—Montana, Wyoming and New Mexico—are excluded due to insufficient data, but still face substantial fire risk.
Fires have ravaged the U.S. in recent years as climate change has intensified, leading to warmer temperatures, drought and shifting rain and snow patterns. Last year, 58,950 wildfires burned 10.1 million acres—the second-most acreage during any year since at least 1983, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. As of June 29, 2021, there were 47 large, active fires burning across the Western U.S., 17 of which were in Arizona.
The start of this year’s fire season coincides with an historic drought and staggering heat waves that have plagued dozens of Western cities. It hit 116 degrees Fahrenheit in Portland, OR on Monday, which broke the previous record of 112 set on Sunday. Sunday’s record broke the 108-degree high set on Saturday, which surpassed the prior 107-degree record set in 1965.
Fire-Risk Summary of Western U.S. States
Statistics in the table below are as of March 31, 2021, unless otherwise noted.
Share of homes facing high fire risk | Number of homes facing high fire risk | Dollar value of homes facing high fire risk (as of June 25, 2021) | Number of fires (2020)* | Acres burned (2020)* | |
Utah | 39.4% | 411,052 | $218,967,436,370 | 1,493 | 329,735 |
Colorado | 19.0% | 385,952 | $222,169,946,674 | 1,080 | 625,357 |
Idaho | 14.4% | 63,399 | $18,676,468,754 | 944 | 314,352 |
Oregon | 8.5% | 113,825 | $55,514,066,830 | 2,215 | 1,141,613 |
Nevada | 7.4% | 95,283 | $68,075,490,214 | 770 | 259,275 |
California | 6.7% | 722,743 | $627,673,338,397 | 10,431 | 4,092,151 |
Washington | 4.8% | 132,111 | $51,776,013,811 | 1,646 | 842,370 |
Arizona | 2.7% | 66,182 | †N/A | 2,524 | 978,568 |
*Source: National Interagency Fire Center
† Home-value data is not available for Arizona because Redfin’s home-value estimates don’t overlap with Arizona’s high-fire-risk areas
While Utah doesn’t rank at the top of the list in terms of number of fires or acreage burned, it has a relatively high share of properties at risk—likely because the state’s most populous cities overlap with its most at-risk areas. As shown in the map below, much of the state’s high fire risk lies in and around Salt Lake City, West Valley City and Provo—Utah’s three largest cities. By comparison, only one of Washington’s three most populous cities—Spokane—overlaps with substantial fire risk.
The development of Salt Lake City dates back to 1847, when Mormons settled there to escape persecution in Illinois. The area and surrounding towns continued to expand as the Mormon community grew, and as the gold rush, the mining industry and the construction of a major railroad brought more people to the region.
Utah has been growing faster than any other U.S. state, with a population that surged 18.4% to 3.3 million from 2010 to 2020. Idaho, which also faces substantial fire risk, came in second place. More than a third (35.7%) of Redfin.com home searches in the Salt Lake City metropolitan area came from outside of the metro in the first quarter, up from 26.8% a year earlier.
“Salt Lake City proper is relatively insulated from fires because it’s located in a valley, but much of the mountainous area surrounding it—especially the Wasatch Range to the east and the north—is covered with dry vegetation that’s prone to burning. A lot of people live in these mountains or right up against them,” said Ryan Aycock, Redfin’s market manager in Salt Lake City. “Many of the homes in Wasatch Range are farm communities or cabins, but there are also luxury homes at risk in Park City, a resort town that’s been very popular during the pandemic. Park City is a mix of vacation and primary homes, but we’ve recently seen an increase of families coming in from Seattle, California and New York to buy primary homes because they can work from anywhere and want to be near great skiing and hiking.”
Park City isn’t alone. Other vacation and migration destinations, including Bend, OR, Boise, ID and Lake Tahoe, CA, have seen scores of remote workers move in who now face fire risk.
“For the most part, the buyers and sellers don’t seem too worried about fires. They’re more concerned about droughts and water shortages,” Aycock said. “We’ve had a lot of near misses in Utah—there will be a fire warning, and then the fire isn’t as bad as people feared. It’s a bit of a boy-who-cried-wolf situation. A lot of folks could be caught flat-footed if a major fire does hit their community. Anyone who’s considering moving to the area should read the local fire planning and evacuation guides and create their own plan of action so they’re prepared when fires hit.”
About two-thirds of adults in Utah believe global warming is happening, compared with about three-quarters of adults in California, Washington and Oregon, according to a 2020 study by Yale University.
In Dollar Terms, California Has the Most Housing in Danger, With Over $600 Billion of Properties at Risk
While Utah has the largest share of properties with high fire risk, California has the most property value in danger, with $628 billion worth of homes facing high fire risk. That’s because home values in California are relatively high. By comparison, Utah and Colorado have about $220 billion of homes with high risk, and the remaining states in this analysis have less than $75 billion of property at risk.
California is also the third largest state in terms of mileage and is the densest state in the West, meaning there are more homes that can burn. It has 722,743 homes with high fire risk—a larger number than the other states Redfin analyzed. In 2020, California faced 10,431 fires that burned 4.1 million acres—more fires and acreage than any other U.S. state. Almost 40% of the acreage that burned across the U.S. last year was in California.
“Sellers who are in the market right now are rushing to get under contract because they know buyers may start rethinking their decisions when fire season worsens,” said Christopher Anderson, a Redfin real estate agent in Napa, CA, which has faced devastating wildfires in recent years. “But the truth of the matter is that once fire season ends, much of the fear fades away. We’ve seen a lot of people leave the area as wildfires have intensified, but they’re always replaced by new people who are willing to take the risk. Buyers do tend to have a preference for homes that have been fortified against fires because that means there’s one less task they have to deal with.”
Anderson continued: “One of the first things I tell people who are considering buying a home in the Napa area is that they need to get a quote for fire insurance. There are horror stories about buyers who are a week away from closing and find out their monthly fire-insurance premium will cost more than their monthly mortgage payment.”
Top Counties at Risk in the Western U.S.
Below are the five counties with the largest share of homes facing high fire risk in each of the following states: Utah, Washington, Colorado, Idaho, Oregon, California, Nevada and Arizona. To be included, a county must have had at least 150 homes facing high fire risk. Boxes marked with a “N/A” indicate there were no Redfin Estimates of home values in the corresponding counties.
Utah: Counties With Highest Share of Homes at Risk
Share of homes facing high fire risk | Dollar value of homes facing high fire risk | Number of homes facing high fire risk | |
Rich County | 96.9% | $495,464,666 | 1,627 |
Summit County | 95.1% | $32,465,474,771 | 28,819 |
Wasatch County | 94.6% | $10,475,621,810 | 15,039 |
Morgan County | 93.4% | N/A | 442 |
Juab County | 78.1% | N/A | 1,083 |
Washington: Counties With Highest Share of Homes at Risk
Share of homes facing high fire risk | Dollar value of homes facing high fire risk | Number of homes facing high fire risk | |
Okanogan County | 83.4% | $3,375,584,083 | 11,063 |
Ferry County | 80.8% | N/A | 2,047 |
Lincoln County | 78.1% | $359,328,227 | 1,874 |
Douglas County | 70.7% | $3,179,555,065 | 7,447 |
Spokane County | 45.2% | $27,535,450,170 | 67,113 |
Colorado: Counties With Highest Share of Homes at Risk
Share of homes facing high fire risk | Dollar value of homes facing high fire risk | Number of homes facing high fire risk | |
Elbert County | 89.9% | $5,056,825,342 | 8,460 |
Routt County | 86.6% | $14,031,780,783 | 14,773 |
Douglas County | 66.2% | $78,083,998,062 | 114,708 |
Eagle County | 59.1% | N/A | 13,374 |
Rio Blanco County | 51.0% | N/A | 779 |
Idaho: Counties With Highest Share of Homes at Risk
Share of homes facing high fire risk | Dollar value of homes facing high fire risk | Number of homes facing high fire risk | |
Boise County | 98.8% | N/A | 942 |
Bear Lake County | 97.5% | N/A | 1,669 |
Adams County | 95.4% | N/A | 999 |
Lincoln County | 92.1% | N/A | 269 |
Caribou County | 88.6% | N/A | 1,314 |
Oregon: Counties With Highest Share of Homes at Risk
Share of homes facing high fire risk | Dollar value of homes facing high fire risk | Number of homes facing high fire risk | |
Gilliam County | 92.8% | N/A | 722 |
Harney County | 88.6% | N/A | 1,565 |
Wheeler County | 85.5% | N/A | 359 |
Jefferson County | 70.5% | $543,219,498 | 1,357 |
Klamath County | 64.2% | $3,929,387,237 | 16,655 |
California: Counties With Highest Share of Homes at Risk
Share of homes facing high fire risk | Dollar value of homes facing high fire risk | Number of homes facing high fire risk | |
Amador County | 67.5% | $3,050,032,475 | 6,850 |
Mariposa County | 59.6% | N/A | 2,495 |
El Dorado County | 54.0% | $21,926,527,195 | 34,300 |
Calaveras County | 53.4% | $6,586,350,212 | 17,280 |
Nevada County | 45.7% | $19,615,406,228 | 25,101 |
Nevada: Counties With Highest Share of Homes at Risk
Share of homes facing high fire risk | Dollar value of homes facing high fire risk | Number of homes facing high fire risk | |
Storey County | 73.7% | N/A | 1,404 |
Eureka County | 59.9% | N/A | 179 |
Douglas County | 49.8% | $21,532,492,504 | 20,387 |
Washoe County | 35.1% | $41,906,259,274 | 57,440 |
Carson City | 30.0% | $2,798,720,147 | 4,863 |
Arizona: Counties With Highest Share of Homes at Risk
Share of homes facing high fire risk | Dollar value of homes facing high fire risk | Number of homes facing high fire risk | |
Coconino County | 50.5% | N/A | 22,325 |
Gila County | 46% | N/A | 11,478 |
Navajo County | 43.7% | N/A | 14,774 |
Yavapai County | 16.9% | N/A | 16,422 |
Pima County | 0.09% | $180,336,993 | 411 |
Methodology
Fire-risk data comes from ClimateCheck, whose underlying analysis is based on the MC2 dynamic global vegetation model that projects the average proportion of the area surrounding a home that will burn annually. ClimateCheck assigns six different fire-risk categories to properties across the U.S.—very low, low, moderate, high, very high, and extreme. For the purposes of this report, a “high-fire-risk” property is one that falls into the high, very high or extreme category. The fire-risk data in this report is as of March 31, 2021.
We matched fire-risk data with county records for eight of the 11 states in the contiguous U.S. West. The remaining three states—Montana, New Mexico and Wyoming—are excluded from this analysis due to insufficient data. The value of homes at risk is the sum of the Redfin Estimates of the homes’ market values as of June 25, 2021. For the county tables, we show only those counties with at least 150 properties with high fire risk, and we also only show dollar values of homes facing high fire risk for those counties where Redfin Estimates has coverage.