After a loss, the insurance process runs on evidence, and the homeowner is the only party in the room expected to produce it from memory. The record you make before matters more than the photos you take after, because before is the only time everything still exists to be photographed.
Last reviewed September 1, 2026 · See also the nonrenewal guide
The fires that began near Spokane on August 1 destroyed hundreds of homes and forced tens of thousands of evacuations. On August 3, Insurance Commissioner Patty Kuderer issued an emergency order protecting policyholders in every affected area. If you live in a ZIP code, or a ZIP code adjacent to one, where structures burned or evacuation orders were issued, here is what the order requires of your insurer through September 30, 2026.
In effect August 3 through September 30, 2026. Extendable 30 days at a time while the governor's emergency proclamation remains in effect. Applies to all property and auto insurers operating in Washington.
Worth noticing: Washington's regulator moved within two days, statewide, on the side of the homeowner. That is what a protective insurance department looks like. It is also a signal about what comes next.
The notice extension exists because the state expects nonrenewals. Washington officials had described their market as stabilized and heading toward price competition; the same officials now say the fires have put that into question and that regulators are collecting data from carriers to measure the damage. In plain terms, insurers across the state are re-evaluating what Washington risk looks like. In plainer terms, the standards for what a homeowner is expected to document, at renewal and at claim time, are not going to get more relaxed from here.
This is the pattern other Western states have already lived through: a destructive fire, then a market response measured in nonrenewal letters and aerial re-inspections of homes that never burned. Wildfire stopped being a somewhere-else risk for Washington some time ago; the state's own insurance department maintains a wildfire resource section for exactly this reason. What changed this month is that the re-evaluation now has a date on it.
A sealed home record is documentation created while everything still exists: rooms, contents, finishes, upgrades, the workshop nobody remembers the value of until it is gone, and the condition of the roof, the vegetation, the ground around the structure. Each photograph is timestamped, location-verified, and cryptographically sealed at the moment it is taken, so no one has to take your word for when it was made or whether it has been altered since.
The guided walkthrough takes about an hour and pre-makes every decision for you: where to stand, what to capture, in what order. You finish with two things. A certificate with a permanent public verification link, which contains no photos and is safe to hand to an agent, an adjuster, or an underwriter. And a private evidence packet holding the photographs themselves, which stays yours.
Contents claims run on proof of what you owned and what condition it was in. A dated, sealed inventory made in an ordinary week is a different kind of evidence than a list reconstructed from memory in a terrible one.
Carriers increasingly review homes from aerial imagery and third-party data, including structure-to-structure conflagration risk scored from neighboring parcels. A verifiable record of your property's actual condition gives an independent agent something to put in front of the next carrier's underwriter. Start with the nonrenewal guide.
To be plain about it: a sealed record does not stop or reverse a nonrenewal, and it does not decide a claim. It is the homeowner's own documentation, made in advance, of what is true about the home. In a market that is re-evaluating everything, that is the one part of the file you control.
$69 a year. One property, unlimited sealed captures.
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