The Fire Disclosure Rule Every Los Gatos Hillside Seller Just Inherited
August 20, 2026
August 20, 2026
"That really saved our property, our neighborhood, the hillside." That's what one Los Gatos resident told a local news crew after a two-acre fire broke out near Mountain Laurel Lane in May 2024, and neighbors who had already cleared brush and cut back vegetation kept it from spreading to the surrounding subdivision. Santa Clara County fire officials later credited the neighborhood's defensible space work with saving the homes on that hillside.
That fire was contained back in 2024, but it points to something sellers on the same hillsides need to understand before they list this year. The instinct that saved those homes, clearing brush, cutting vegetation back from structures, has always been good practice in Los Gatos. What changed is that California now wants it in writing, and the Town changed its own fire hazard map on top of the state's rule, which means more Los Gatos homes qualify for the new paperwork than did a year ago.
In June 2025, the Los Gatos Town Council adopted a new Fire Hazard Severity Zone map through Resolution 2025-037 and formalized it two weeks later with Ordinance 2374, bringing the Town's local zone designations into compliance with the state's updated criteria. Santa Clara County Fire Department had released its own countywide update to these Local Responsibility Area maps that February. Southern Los Gatos sits inside a Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zone under the current designation, and hillside neighborhoods including the Civic Center area, Vista del Monte, and Glenridge fall within the Town's mandatory defensible space boundary, along with homes further out along Bear Creek Road, upper Highland Avenue, and the Redwood Estates area near the county line.
If your home sat just outside a fire hazard boundary under the old map, it is worth checking again. Zone lines move when maps get redrawn, and a property that wasn't previously subject to these disclosures can be now, without anything on the lot itself having changed.
Assembly Bill 38, passed in 2019, rolled out its wildfire disclosure requirements in phases. The most recent phase took effect July 1, 2025, and it applies specifically to homes built before January 1, 2010 that sit in a High or Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zone. For those properties, sellers must now go beyond stating whether the home sits in a risk zone. They have to affirmatively disclose whether any of twelve specific low-cost fire-hardening retrofits, developed jointly by Cal Fire and the California Governor's Office of Emergency Services, have been completed during their ownership. The list includes things like blocking gaps between roof covering and sheathing with noncombustible bird stops and installing gutter covers that keep leaves and debris from accumulating.
This is a different kind of disclosure than California sellers are used to. The older wildfire vulnerability disclosure only asked what you were aware of. This one asks what you actually did, and it asks you to answer yes or no on each item regardless of whether you remember doing the work.
Most Los Gatos hillside homes were built well before 2010. That is not a coincidence of construction history so much as a description of the neighborhood itself, and it means this disclosure will touch a large share of the listings that come out of these hillsides in the next several years.
Here is the part that catches sellers off guard. Los Gatos has required defensible space around structures in high-risk zones for years, and the Town has tightened those rules further, amending its tree protection code to exempt trees removed for defensible space from standard protections and extending required weed abatement along roadways from five feet to ten. Homeowners in these neighborhoods have often already done real work, clearing brush, replacing screens, hiring landscapers to keep growth back from the house, because Santa Clara County Fire Department has been sending defensible space guidance to hillside residents for years and because insurance renewal has made it necessary.
The problem is that almost none of that work was ever documented for a buyer. A retrofit completed five years ago because a landscaper suggested it, or because a neighbor mentioned the fire department's guidance, does not show up anywhere unless someone kept the receipt. Under the new disclosure, a homeowner who genuinely doesn't remember whether ember-resistant vents were installed has to answer as though the work was never done, because the form asks what was completed, not what the seller currently recalls.
That means a Los Gatos hillside home that is, in practice, well prepared for wildfire can look underprepared on paper simply because nobody wrote anything down. For a seller, that gap between the actual condition of the home and what the disclosure form can support is the friction point worth addressing months before a listing goes live, not during escrow.
A rough guide to what triggers the July 2025 requirement:
If both of the first two apply to your property, the disclosure requirement applies regardless of whether you have completed any retrofits at all.
The disclosure law exists because insurers, regulators, and buyers all want a clearer picture of wildfire exposure, and that same pressure has already reshaped the Los Gatos insurance market independent of any paperwork requirement. In September 2024, San José Spotlight reported on a Los Gatos hillside resident whose State Farm policy, costing about $2,055 a year, was among more than 1,200 in the Los Gatos area the carrier declined to renew as major insurers pulled back from wildfire-prone parts of California. Many hillside homeowners in town have moved to the California FAIR Plan since.
The Town has been working the other side of that problem, and it now has something concrete to show for it. Los Gatos submitted an application for California's Fire Risk Reduction Community designation in July 2025, and in July 2026 the California Board of Forestry and Fire Protection approved the Town for inclusion on that year's Fire Risk Reduction Community list. That designation can translate into insurance benefits under the state's Safer from Wildfires regulation, and it gives sellers something a listing could not point to a year ago. The Town has also hosted Firewise USA information sessions to help individual neighborhoods organize around defensible space standards, since Firewise participation can factor into a homeowner's insurance standing as well.
None of this changes what a seller has to disclose. But a listing that can point to a documented Firewise effort, a completed defensible space assessment, or receipts for specific hardening work is answering the same disclosure questions from a stronger position than one that can only say the work was probably done at some point.
Start earlier than you think you need to. Confirm your property's current Fire Hazard Severity Zone status against the Town's updated map rather than assuming last year's designation still applies. If your home was built before 2010 and falls inside a High or Very High zone, pull together whatever documentation exists for past work: roofing invoices, vent replacement receipts, any defensible space inspection paperwork from Santa Clara County Fire Department. If you cannot document a retrofit, disclose it as not completed rather than guessing, since inaccurate disclosures create more risk than accurate but unflattering ones.
It is also worth knowing that the disclosure has teeth. If a buyer removes contingencies before receiving these disclosures, they retain a right to cancel escrow and recover their deposit once the disclosure is delivered late. Getting this paperwork assembled and delivered early in the listing process, rather than scrambling once an offer is in hand, protects the timeline as much as it protects the seller.
Does this apply if my home is in town rather than up in the hills? The disclosure is tied to the Fire Hazard Severity Zone map, not to a neighborhood's reputation. Some properties closer to downtown still fall inside the mandatory zone, so check the map rather than assuming based on address alone.
What if I never did any fire hardening work? You still have to complete the disclosure, listing each of the required items as not completed. There is no penalty for an honest no. The risk comes from guessing or leaving items blank.
Does a newer roof or recent remodel automatically satisfy this? Not necessarily. The disclosure asks about specific items on the state's list, like bird stops and ember-resistant vents, not general renovation. A newer roof helps, but it does not substitute for confirming the specific retrofits on the form.
Selling a hillside home in Los Gatos has always meant more preparation than a flatland listing. This year it means paperwork preparation as much as staging preparation, and the sellers who start that work early are the ones who avoid a disclosure surprise mid-escrow. If you are weighing a listing on the hillside side of town and want a clear read on where your property sits under the current fire hazard map, and what documentation would strengthen your disclosure before you go live, Yore & Van Zant can walk through it with you and help you get a free market analysis started.
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