Colorado · nonrenewal

Dropped by your home insurance in Colorado? As of July 1, 2026, the score has to explain itself.

Colorado is the first state to write a wildfire score appeal right into statute rather than regulation. If a score or model played a role in your nonrenewal, the insurer owes you written notice, a plain-language explanation, and an appeal path with deadlines.

Last reviewed August 1, 2026 · Part of the nonrenewal guide

What Colorado law gives you

HB25-1182Formal appeal right

Signed May 28, 2025. Effective July 1, 2026.

The notice Any insurer using a wildfire risk model, catastrophe model, or other scoring method to underwrite, price, nonrenew, or surcharge a homeowners policy must give the policyholder written notice at application, renewal, and nonrenewal. The notice must explain the score in plain language, give the range of scores a property could be assigned, and state the effect each mitigation action could have.
The appeal Policyholders and applicants may appeal the score, the classification, or a denied mitigation discount if they believe it is inaccurate and can produce evidence of the mitigation work they have done.
10 days to acknowledge an appeal
30 days to decide it
A detail most coverage misses On February 10, 2026 the Division of Insurance issued Bulletin B-5.56, guidance to insurers on what the notice must contain, shipped with a model notice as Attachment A. You can compare what your insurer actually sent against what the Division told them to send. Our plain-language guide to HB25-1182 walks through it.

Read the statute's own words: evidence of the mitigation work

The appeal right is written around one thing you control. You can contest the score if you believe it is inaccurate and can produce evidence of the mitigation work you have done. The legislature did not create a right to argue with a model. It created a right to put documentation of your actual property against the model's output.

Which means the homeowner who documented the cleared defensible space, the roof, the vents, before or right after the letter arrived, is the homeowner the statute was written for.

If the appeal is not the answer

Door two is always open: shopping the market through an independent agent. A dated, verifiable record of the home's condition and mitigation is a concrete thing an agent can put in front of the next carrier's underwriter, whatever the last carrier decided. Some homes place immediately; some route through surplus lines first and come back to the standard market later.

How the other states compare: the state-by-state tracker.

Where a sealed record fits

Sealed Home Record turns an hour of walking your property into a sealed, tamper-evident, date-verified photographic record with a certificate and a permanent verification link. It is built to be the evidence the appeal runs on, and the documentation the next underwriter can verify. It does not stop or reverse a nonrenewal, and it does not decide your appeal. It puts a dated record in the file where before there was only the model's word.

The statute asks for evidence. Have it ready.

$59 a year founding price until September 1, 2026, locked in for life. $69 a year after. One property, unlimited sealed captures.

Start my record