Can You Still Get Home Insurance in Park City in 2026?

Can you still get homeowners insurance in Park City and the Wasatch Back?

Yes, but it is no longer automatic, and it is no longer cheap. Most of the Wasatch Back sits inside the wildland-urban interface, and Utah's High-Risk WUI map, effective January 1, 2026, flagged roughly 60,000 structures statewide. Some Park City and Wasatch County owners have been non-renewed outright, and Hideout residents have reported annual premiums ranging from $1,500 to more than $27,000. If you are buying here, get a bindable insurance quote before your due diligence deadline passes, not after.

Insurance used to be the last box a Park City buyer checked. You found the house, you negotiated, you called your agent the week before closing, and a policy showed up.

That is not how it works here anymore.

Over the past two years, we have watched insurance move from a line item to a live variable in Wasatch Back transactions. It affects what a property is worth to a buyer, whether a lender will fund the loan, and in a handful of cases, whether the deal closes at all.

Here is what is actually happening, how to find out where a specific property stands, and what to do about it.

Why Wasatch Back premiums moved so fast

The short version: carriers repriced wildfire risk, and this corner of Utah scored badly.

According to a March 2025 report from the Consumer Federation of America, Utah homeowners saw the largest percentage increase in home insurance costs of any state in the country, averaging 59% from 2021 to 2024. Utah Insurance Commissioner Jon Pike has said that so-called "unprotected dwellings" averaged $6,456 a year in 2023, up from a statewide average of $2,820 in 2020.

The local numbers are sharper than the state numbers.

Wasatch Fire District Fire Marshal Clint Neerings told KPCW that his district has fielded calls from hundreds of residents, and that some local HOAs have documented a sixfold increase in their insurance premiums. A Midway homeowner told the station her premium spiked nearly 400%. Another said their household is paying $200 more every month just to stay covered. A Heber City councilmember reported trouble getting coverage at all for his home in Red Ledges.

Hideout is the extreme case. A wildfire assessment found 99% of Hideout homes at high risk, largely because the town sits on a steep hillside above the eastern shore of the Jordanelle Reservoir, and fire climbs. At the first Wasatch County wildfire symposium in July 2025, Mayor Ralph Severini said residents there were paying anywhere from $1,500 for single-family homes and townhomes to $10,000 or more per year, with some reporting up to $27,000 annually. One homeowner said he contacted 20 different carriers after his policy was cancelled.

The context that makes this local rather than national: Cape Analytics data presented at that symposium found Utah has built 191.6 homes per 100,000 residents in high wildfire risk zones, roughly five times the rate of second-place Idaho. Park City alone accounts for 348 of those new builds, and Heber City another 246. We built beautiful homes right where the fuel is.

Two more things sellers and buyers should know:

• Utah has no FAIR Plan. California, Colorado, and many other western states run a state-backed insurer of last resort. Utah does not. If admitted carriers decline you, the fallback is the surplus lines or excess-and-surplus market, where rates are not filed or approved by the state, wildfire exclusions are permitted, and surplus lines taxes of roughly 2% to 6% get added on top of premium. Commissioner Pike has called it the "wild, wild West market," noting these carriers "will write about anything, but it will be at a high price."

• The state cannot force a carrier to write you. Pike has been clear that his department has no authority to require an insurer to issue a policy. There are roughly 130 carriers writing in Utah, and each one makes its own call.

How to find out where a specific property stands

You do not have to guess. Three checks take about a week, and all three should happen inside your due diligence window.

1. Look up the address on the state wildfire portal. Utah's Division of Forestry, Fire and State Lands released the official High-Risk Wildland-Urban Interface map on December 18, 2025, as required by House Bill 48. You can search any address at wildfirerisk.utah.gov and see the risk rating. Structures that scored a 7 or higher and sit within 250 meters of two or more other structures were pulled into the high-risk boundary.

2. Check whether the property carries a mitigation fee. Properties inside the high-risk WUI boundary are assessed a fee on the property tax bill, running $20 to $100 per taxable structure per year for 2026 and 2027, scaled by square footage. Vacant land is excluded. Beginning in 2028, the fee moves to individual lot assessments, which means it can be reduced through mitigation work. It is a small number relative to a Park City tax bill, but it is a useful signal: it tells you the state has formally classified the structure as high risk, and carriers read the same maps. If you are also working through primary versus secondary residence status, our breakdown of Park City property taxes for primary and second homes covers how the rest of that bill is built.

3. Get an actual quote, in writing, before your deadline. Not an estimate. Not a range. A bindable quote from a licensed producer on that specific address, with the deductible and any wildfire exclusions spelled out. This is the step people skip, and it is the one that matters, because your lender will require bindable coverage before funding. An uninsurable property is an unfinanceable property. If you are unclear on how much runway you have to complete these checks, we walk through the timeline in our guide to the due diligence period in Utah real estate.

What buyers and sellers can actually do about it

The good news is that this is one of the few carrying costs you can move.

Mitigation works, and it is documentable. A Hideout homeowner told the Park Record that after a Wasatch Fire District risk assessment, she replaced the woodchips around her home with gravel and trimmed back shrubs near the structure. Her insurance came down by $5,000. Commissioner Pike's comment at that same symposium: "Sometimes when you do your work, you might not only see your policies not go up in terms of premiums, you might see the premiums go down."

The basics carriers look for:

• Ten feet of clearance between the structure and the nearest tree branches

• Non-combustible material in Zone 0, the first five feet around the foundation, which means gravel or stone rather than bark mulch or woodchips

• A Class-A fire-rated roof

• Ember-resistant vents

• Documented, maintained defensible space around the whole envelope

Get the paperwork. Wasatch Fire District will perform a property risk assessment and provide a report the homeowner can hand to a carrier. Neerings put it plainly: "If they're doing everything they can, we send them the report that they can then provide to their insurance company." Some carriers accept it, some want a conversation, some ignore it. It costs you nothing to have it in hand. The IBHS "Wildfire Prepared Home" designation goes further and can unlock discounts in the 5% to 25% range with participating carriers, but only if you submit the documentation proactively.

Check whether the community is Firewise. Firewise USA currently lists nine sites across Summit and Wasatch counties, including Summit Park, Stagecoach Estates, Pinebrook, Promontory, Sun Peak, and Park City Municipal Corporation. Pike has called Firewise participation "a surefire way for homeowners to address their premiums head-on." Discounts vary by carrier, and USAA is one of the carriers that offers one, but the larger benefit is that a Firewise community demonstrates a maintained standard, which underwriters weigh.

For sellers: quantify it before a buyer does. If your home is in the high-risk boundary, a buyer is going to find out during due diligence, and the discovery will land worse mid-contract than it would in your listing materials. Pull your current declarations page, get the fire district assessment, document any mitigation you have already done, and hand the whole package to your agent. A seller who can show a buyer a real premium and a completed mitigation file removes the unknown. A seller who lets the buyer find a $19,000 quote on their own has just invited a price renegotiation.

For buyers: build it into the carrying-cost model from day one. Premium belongs in the same column as HOA dues, resort transfer fees, club dues, and property taxes. On a $4M Park City home, the spread between a well-mitigated property with an admitted carrier and a surplus lines policy on an unmitigated hillside lot can be five figures a year, every year. That is a meaningful chunk of your annual cost, and it deserves the same attention you would give a mortgage rate. Our breakdown of the true cost of buying a home in Park City covers the rest of that model, and if you are underwriting the property as an investment, insurance also comes straight off the net in our analysis of what a Park City ski condo earns as a nightly rental.

One thing worth saying directly: this varies enormously block to block. Two homes a quarter mile apart, one on a slope with heavy vegetation and one on a flat lot with a Class-A roof and cleared defensible space, can get completely different answers from the same carrier. That is exactly why we tell clients not to generalize from a neighbor's premium, and why we get involved early on the properties where insurability is genuinely uncertain.

We are not licensed insurance producers, and nothing here substitutes for a quote from a licensed agent on your specific address. What we can tell you is which subdivisions carriers are actively writing in right now, which ones are getting declined, and how to sequence the checks so you are not discovering a problem the week before closing.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I find out if my Park City home is in the high-risk WUI?

Search your address at wildfirerisk.utah.gov, the Utah Wildfire Risk Assessment Portal maintained by the Division of Forestry, Fire and State Lands. The official High-Risk WUI map took effect January 1, 2026, and identifies about 60,000 structures statewide. You can also check whether a mitigation fee has appeared on the property tax bill.

Can a Wasatch Back home be uninsurable?

Effectively, yes. Some Summit and Wasatch County owners have been non-renewed and have been unable to find a replacement admitted carrier. Utah has no FAIR Plan, so the fallback is the surplus lines market, which will usually write something, but at a much higher price and often with wildfire exclusions.

Should I add an insurance contingency to my Park City offer?

In wildfire-exposed areas, it is worth discussing. At minimum, get a bindable quote in writing before your due diligence or financing deadline expires, because lenders require coverage in place before funding. Talk it through with your agent, since the right structure depends on the property, the neighborhood, and how competitive the offer needs to be.

Does creating defensible space actually lower my premium?

It can, but only if you document it and submit it. Homeowners in Wasatch County have reported reductions after a fire district assessment and basic mitigation work, and IBHS "Wildfire Prepared Home" certification can unlock discounts in the 5% to 25% range with participating carriers. Discounts vary by carrier, and some will not offer one at all.

Does high wildfire risk hurt resale value in Park City?

It is becoming a factor. In mature wildfire markets, properties in the highest hazard zones have sold at measurable discounts and taken longer to sell. The Wasatch Back is earlier in that cycle, but as more buyers run the insurance math during due diligence, insurability is increasingly priced into what a property is worth.

Insurance has quietly become one of the largest swing variables in a Wasatch Back purchase, and it is one of the few you can still influence through documentation and mitigation. The mistake is treating it as paperwork instead of underwriting.

If you're looking for luxury real estate in Park City or anywhere across the Wasatch Back, we're happy to consult on the market and help you assess your options. Reach out to schedule a private consultation with our team.

About David Lawson

David Lawson is the founder of the Lawson Real Estate Team, a luxury real estate group serving Park City and the greater Wasatch Back, including Hideout, Midway, Heber, and Kamas. He leads a team that has closed more than 3,920 transactions and earned recognition as the #1 eXp Realty team in Utah (2022–2025) and previously the #1 Engel & Völkers team worldwide (2019, 2021). David and his team specialize in high-end mountain properties—from single family homes and new construction to ski-in/ski-out vacation properties and short-term rental investments—guiding buyers and sellers through one of the most segmented luxury markets in the country.