AB-38 and Wildfire Disclosure: What Bay Area Buyers and Sellers Must Know

What does AB-38 actually require?

The general requirement to disclose that a home sits in a wildfire hazard zone comes from California's natural-hazard-disclosure statutes, which apply at the point of sale. AB-38 added two things on top for homes in state-designated high or very-high fire hazard severity zones: documentation that the property complies with defensible-space requirements (Civil Code §1102.19), and, for homes built before 2010, a disclosure of home-hardening features (Civil Code §1102.6f).

The rules are layered: a baseline of wildfire disclosure applies more broadly, and a heavier set of obligations applies specifically to homes in the designated high-risk zones. Which bucket a home falls into depends on the current state maps, which is why the first practical step is always to look the address up. The exact triggers, form names, and effective timing have shifted as the rules have been phased in and tightened over recent years, so confirm the current version with a real-estate attorney before you rely on any specific detail.

How do you check whether an address is in a fire zone?

You can check for free, at the address level, without taking anyone's word for it. The relevant tool is the fire hazard severity zone (FHSZ) map published by CAL FIRE. A fire hazard severity zone is a state-designated category that rates how prone an area is to wildfire, and the tiers are commonly described as moderate, high, and very-high. You enter an address and the map tells you which tier, if any, applies. Because the state updates these maps, verify the date, since an older printout may not reflect a recent change.

Fire is not the only hazard with a public map. For flood risk, a separate question, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) publishes flood maps that show whether a property sits in a Special Flood Hazard Area (SFHA), which is FEMA's designation for land with a higher statistical chance of flooding. This matters for two reasons beyond the water itself: a home in an SFHA can trigger a requirement to carry flood insurance, and that designation can affect some loans. Flood and fire are separate questions with separate maps, so check both.

What the seller has to disclose, and why you should still verify it

Defensible space is the cleared and managed area of vegetation around a home, designed to slow a fire and give it less fuel as it approaches. It is commonly framed as roughly 100 feet of managed clearance around the structure, though the exact requirement and how it is measured should be checked against current CAL FIRE guidance rather than treated as a fixed number. Home hardening refers to fire-resistant building features: things like the roof, the vents, the windows, and attached fences and decks, all of which are common places where embers start a house fire. The home-hardening disclosure applies to homes built before 2010 in high or very-high fire hazard severity zones: older construction predates the modern wildfire building standards, which is exactly why the law singles it out.

Here is the part that matters most, and the part buyers most often miss. The documentation requirements for defensible-space compliance vary by jurisdiction: some cities and counties require an inspection by a local agency or fire district, while others accept other forms of documentation. Verify which rules apply to the specific property, and treat the paperwork as a claim to check, not a guarantee that the work is done. And there is a second wrinkle: where compliance documentation does not exist at the time of sale, the law lets the buyer and seller agree in writing that the buyer will obtain compliance within one year of closing. Read that clause carefully before you sign it: it is a real obligation you take on, with real clearing costs, on a home you have not lived in yet.

There are three common ways a seller's wildfire disclosure can be wrong, and all three show up in real deals:

1. The compliance is claimed but not actually present. The box gets checked, but the work was never done.
2. The compliance was real at some point, but vegetation has regrown since the last clearing and quietly undone it. Defensible space is not a one-time task; brush comes back.
3. The defensible space is genuinely there, but the home-hardening features are incomplete. The yard is cleared, yet the roof, vents, windows, or attached fences and decks were never upgraded.

None of this means a seller is acting in bad faith. It usually means no one independently looked. That is exactly why a buyer should look.

What a buyer should do

A few concrete moves protect you on a fire-zone home.

Get a homeowners-insurance quote before you write the offer, or at the very latest before you remove your loan contingency. A loan contingency is the clause in your contract that lets you back out without losing your deposit if your financing does not come together. In fire zones, coverage can be hard to find or expensive, and a lender generally will not fund a loan on an uninsured home. An insurance problem that surfaces during closing week can sink an otherwise solid deal. Getting the quote early turns a closing-week emergency into an offer-week fact you can plan around. Carriers have been pulling back from fire-exposed areas and premiums have been climbing, so do not assume coverage will be there. For more on how this fits together, see our home-insurance guide.

Visit the property and look at the defensible space with your own eyes. You do not need to be an expert to notice brush against the house, a wood fence running straight into the siding, or a roof that looks past its life. Pair what you see with what the disclosure says.

Consider keeping your contingencies rather than waiving them to win a bid. In a heated market the pressure to remove contingencies is real, but on a fire-zone home those clauses are doing useful work.

And talk to a real-estate attorney about the disclosure language itself. If something in the packet is vague, contradicts what you see, or leans on a certification you cannot confirm, that is a question for a lawyer, not a guess.

Why this matters more in 2026

Two things make this sharper than a few years ago.

First, do not lean on listing sites to show the risk. Portals have added, revised, and sometimes removed climate-risk scores over the past few years, and what a given site displays can change without notice. Treat any portal score as a starting point, not an answer. If you want to know a home's fire and flood exposure, look it up yourself on the official CAL FIRE and FEMA maps. The maps are the record; the portals are a convenience.

Second, the market around the risk has tightened. Insurance carriers have pulled back in fire-exposed areas, the wildfire disclosure rules have been phased in and tightened over recent years, and the state fire maps have been redrawn. A home that was outside a designated zone on an old map may sit inside one today. All of this rewards the buyer who checks early and the seller who discloses honestly and keeps records.

How I handle this for my clients

In every fire-zone offer I write, I pull the CAL FIRE and FEMA maps for the address before my client signs anything, and I line up the seller's disclosure against what the maps and the property actually show. I work in English and Russian, I have been in real estate since 2007 and California licensed since 2016, and across the Bay Area I have closed 104 transactions and over $115M in volume from 2017 to 2026, including in the hill and canyon neighborhoods where fire zones come up most. Marin's hillside homes are a clear example, and a buyer of a private, off-market home in Tiburon runs the same CAL FIRE and FEMA map checks and reviews the same wildfire disclosures as a buyer of an openly listed home.

If you are looking at a home near the hills, or selling one and want to get your disclosures right the first time, message me and I will pull the maps for your address and walk you through what they mean for your specific situation. Every property is different, and a real-estate attorney should review the legal language, but you should never go into a fire-zone deal without knowing what the maps say.

FAQ