A new wildfire-resistant neighborhood at KB Home in Escondido, California.
CNBC
Just months after a devastated wildfire destroyed thousands of homes in the Los Angeles area, California KB Home It presents what it first calls the “wildfire-resistant” community.
The development in Escondido, just outside of San Diego, will establish 64 detached homes once it has completed meeting all wildfire resilience standards developed by the Insurance Institute (IBHS), a non-profit, scientific research and communications organization supported by real estate insurance companies. These standards are designed to protect your home from three main sources of ignition during wildfires: flying embers, flames and radiant heat.
A few homes under development are now complete, with around 20 homes already on sale. According to KB Home, three homeowners have moved.
The home is made with covered trenches, enclosed eaves, burning siding like stucco and fiber cement, glass windows, and non-flammable patios, doors and roofs. It has a 6-inch vertical clearance using concrete foundations, stuccos and stones. It also incorporates a defensive space with flammable vegetation at least 5 feet from the home. Metal fencing is used throughout the neighborhood.
Steve Ruffner, regional general manager of the coastal division at KB Home, said he and his colleagues were impressed by the opportunity presented by this type of community after seeing a fire-resistant home demonstration by IBHS at the Pacific Coast Builders Conference last summer. KB Home had already broken the ground in development, so it had to quickly change gears to incorporate fire-resistant components.
“We had to change the architecture on-site with fire-resistant shutters or fire-resistant shutters and doors and tempered windows to a more ridiculous architecture. They wanted to work with us, so we were able to do it in town really quickly.
He called it more research and development projects, and saw what the costs were and how to work with trading partners to reduce those costs, but he didn’t say how much those costs had increased.
Located in Escondido, California, KB Home’s new wildfire-resistant district.
CNBC
Houses range from $1 million to millions of dollars, which tend to be the local move-up price for single-family detached homes.
“We are trying to get costs in a reasonable place because we really specialize in first-time buyers and first-time move-up buyers, so we want to make sure we can get this in a good place where it is affordable.
As climate change causes more severe droughts in more parts of the country, the focus is shifting to fire-resistant homes and communities.
During the Palisades fire in January, several homes, specifically built to fire-resistant standards, remained intact, destroying everything around it. However, these types of homes are mostly one-time only by custom builders.
According to IBHS, although progress has been made in California on a home-by-home basis, KB Home is the country’s first major production builder to design and fully build 64 homes to meet the Wildfire Prepared Neighborhood Standard.
Within the specifications, the house is 10 feet away, which helps slow the progress of the fire.
A new wildfire-resistant neighborhood at KB Home in Escondido, California.
CNBC
“This parcel, built by KB Home, is truly a testbed to show and demonstrate this,” said IBHS CEO Roy Wright. “We already know that KB Home has two other projects in Escondido. We look at homes in Duplex and other types of towns and imagine that other builders will follow suit soon. They are trying to build a home that Californians want to buy.”
Wright emphasized that part of the draw is not just building a survivable home, but building an insured home. Insurance companies have withdrawn from California in large numbers, costing homeowners to rise, and some are completely uninsured.
The home is billed for fire resistant, but that doesn’t mean it’s completely risk-free. Homeowners and cities need to make changes in terms of fireproof landscaping, elevation, and even design. If the community is on the wildfire line, actual testing will occur in the future.
“There’s nothing fireproofing. We’re always just trying to narrow down these paths of destruction,” Wright said.
