Wildfire Insurance on Rental Properties in Oregon: Rising Non-Renewals and the $8,000 Swing

Investor Insights · Bend, Redmond & Sisters · September 2026

Premium increases are the story everyone tells. Non-renewal is the one that actually breaks a deal, and Central Oregon is where it is happening.

The Short Answer

Wildfire insurance on Oregon rental properties has stopped behaving like an expense line and started behaving like an event. The relevant number is no longer the annual increase. It is the gap between what you are paying now and what you would pay if your carrier walked away.

In Central Oregon that gap runs about $8,000 a year on a single-family rental: roughly $1,500 for a standard-market policy against roughly $9,500 for a forced replacement after non-renewal. That figure is not a projection. It is the documented range from real Bend and Sisters cases over the past eighteen months.

On the deals we underwrite, $8,000 a year is enough to take a thin rental and make it structurally worse, because most leveraged Central Oregon purchases at current prices are already cash-flow negative before insurance becomes a problem at all.

Non-Renewal, Not Premium, Is the Underwriting Risk

Statewide averages are useless here, and they are the number most articles lead with when they write about wildfire insurance on rental property in Oregon. The state's average homeowners premium went from about $583 in 2018 to just over $886 in 2023. That is a real increase and it is also completely disconnected from what wildfire-exposed Central Oregon owners have experienced.

The actual pattern in Deschutes County has been carriers leaving, then whatever is left repricing the risk from scratch.

By early 2024, Safeco and Progressive had effectively stopped writing new business in ZIP codes around Bend, Sisters and Sunriver. In March 2025, Farmers canceled roughly 200 policies in the Sisters area outright. One of those owners saw an annual premium go from $5,000 to $10,000 while the deductible went from $500 to $10,000.

A vacation-home owner northwest of Bend had a premium go from roughly $1,000 to $9,000, and her broker could not find a second quote. A Bend owner posted an 87 percent renewal increase tied to a wildfire risk score, with the carrier stating that mitigation work would be unlikely to change it.

Two Central Oregon senators, Anthony Broadman of Bend and Mike McLane of Powell Butte, asked State Farm, Allstate and Liberty Mutual for a voluntary moratorium on non-renewals driven by internal map tools. That request tells you how little leverage exists at the property level.

Repealing the State Map Changed Nothing for Your Policy

Oregon repealed its statewide wildfire hazard map in 2025 under Senate Bill 83 after four years of political fighting. Investors sometimes read that as relief. It is not.

Carriers were never allowed to price off the state map. ORS 742.278 barred that use in 2023. They price off proprietary models, most commonly Verisk or ISO FireLine and similar tools, and the repeal does not touch those. A parcel backing to Deschutes National Forest off Skyliners Road scores the same today as it did in 2024.

We covered the full statutory timeline, the policy forms, and the coverage mechanics in our guide to landlord insurance in Oregon. This article is about what the money does.

Which Central Oregon ZIP Codes the Emergency Order Actually Covers

On July 31, 2026, Oregon's Division of Financial Regulation issued a Wildfire Emergency Order suspending cancellations and non-renewals for property and casualty policies in affected areas. It was extended on August 31 and runs through September 29, 2026.

Here is the part almost nobody reports accurately: the order applies only to ZIP codes named in DFR Bulletin 2026-6, and the Central Oregon coverage is partial.

If you own on Awbrey Butte or near Tetherow, your ZIP is currently covered. If you own in the Old Farm District on the east side of Bend, or anywhere in Redmond including Dry Canyon and Canyon Rim Village, it is not.

Two things follow from that. First, the order is a pause tied to evacuation geography, not a rate cap and not a statewide protection. Second, it expires in weeks, and non-renewal notices that were withdrawn under it can be reissued afterward. If you hold property in a covered ZIP, the practical read is that you have a short window, not a reprieve.

What an $8,000 Insurance Swing Does to a Central Oregon Rental

We modeled a leveraged single-family rental in each of the three markets we manage, using 25 percent down and 6.95 percent investor-rate thirty-year debt against current Central Oregon values and in-place rents from our own portfolio data. Three insurance scenarios: $1,500 for a standard-market policy, $4,800 for a high-wildfire-zone private carrier, and $9,500 for a forced replacement consistent with the Bend and Sisters cases above.

The headline is not the swing. It is the starting point. At standard-market insurance, all three markets already run negative leveraged cash flow: Bend at roughly negative $23,300 a year, Sisters at negative $20,900, Redmond at negative $14,800. Going-in cap rates sit between 2.6 and 2.9 percent.

These are deals priced for appreciation, not income. A Bend median single-family value close to $694,000 against roughly $2,700 a month in asking rent is the whole problem, and it exists before insurance enters the conversation. If you are weighing the underlying thesis, our analysis of whether Bend real estate is still a good investment works through the appreciation-versus-income tradeoff.

Insurance escalation does not create the hole. It deepens an existing one by another $8,000 a year, which is about $667 a month of additional carry on a property that was already asking you to fund it.

Insurance as a Share of Net Operating Income

The cleaner way to see the damage is to measure the premium against what the property actually earns.

At a standard-market premium, insurance is 8 to 10 percent of the property's pre-insurance NOI. That is normal and nobody thinks about it. At a forced-replacement premium it becomes 48 percent in Bend, 52 percent in Sisters, and 61 percent in Redmond.

Redmond takes the worst proportional hit, and the reason is arithmetic rather than market weakness. The same $8,000 is divided by a smaller asset value and a smaller equity check, so it consumes more of both. Investors who moved to Redmond specifically for the lower entry price are the ones most exposed to a premium shock. If that is your buy box, our comparison of Bend versus Redmond for rental property investors is worth rereading with this in mind.

What It Does to Debt Coverage

At standard-market insurance, these properties cover about 0.44 to 0.49 times their amortizing debt service. At a forced-replacement premium that falls to roughly 0.21 to 0.24 times, meaning net operating income covers about a quarter of the payment.

No DSCR lender writes at those numbers on a new purchase. This is why the insurance question belongs in your acquisition underwriting rather than your renewal paperwork, and why it sits alongside taxes, reserves and management in our walkthrough of how to calculate rental property ROI in Bend.

You Cannot Pass It Through Fast Enough

Owners often assume they will raise rent to cover it. Oregon's rent stabilization law caps that. Under ORS 90.323, the 2026 maximum increase for most existing tenancies is 9.5 percent.

On $2,700 a month, a maximum legal increase adds about $256 a month, or roughly $3,080 a year. An $8,000 insurance swing therefore takes about two and a half years of maximum legal increases to absorb, assuming nothing else in your expense stack moves. It will. Our guide to the Oregon rent increase limit for 2026 covers the notice rules and the exemptions.

The cap applies to raising rent on a sitting tenant, not to setting asking rent on a vacancy. That distinction matters less than it sounds, because turnover carries its own cost and you only get one reset.

Where Oregon's Wildfire Protections Stop for Rental Owners

Senate Bill 82, passed in 2023, gave Oregon homeowners real rights: a property-specific explanation for a wildfire-driven non-renewal, disclosure of how risk scores are built, and a statement of what mitigation would change. Those rights live in ORS 742.277.

They attach to "homeowner insurance," which ORS 746.600 defines as coverage for owning or occupying a dwelling and expressly excludes insurance intended to cover an owner's interest in rental property. Read plainly, a dwelling fire policy on a tenant-occupied house sits outside that definition.

We are not attorneys and this has not been litigated that we can find. But the question is worth putting to your agent in writing before your next renewal, and we walk through it in more depth in the landlord insurance guide.

Worth watching: Senate Bill 1540, taken up in the 2026 session, would require insurers using catastrophe or wildfire risk models to file them with the state, credit documented mitigation, and publish their appeal processes. Its scope language reaches fire, casualty, property and homeowners policies, which is broader than SB 82. Confirm its final status before relying on it.

The FAIR Plan Is Not a Backstop for a Rental

When private coverage disappears, the Oregon FAIR Plan is the last resort. Deschutes County enrollment in it has more than doubled since 2021, which is the clearest single indicator of how far the private market has pulled back.

For a rental owner the FAIR Plan has three hard edges. Dwelling coverage is capped at $600,000 without separately arranged facultative reinsurance. Settlement is on an actual cash value basis, so depreciation comes out of the check. And there is no liability coverage and no theft coverage at all.

There is a fourth edge that catches landlords specifically. The FAIR Plan does not write vacant property. Between tenants, a rental can drift toward the vacancy definitions in both the FAIR Plan's underwriting and the standard dwelling forms, which means your days-to-lease stops being purely a revenue question and becomes a coverage question.

That is the part we watch most closely. Legacy's portfolio averages seven to ten days from listing to signed lease against a Bend single-family market average of 44 to 59 days on market in mid-2026, and our tenants stay three to five years. For an owner in a hard insurance market, that gap is not a marketing statistic. It is the difference between a short turn and an exposure. Our guidance on managing a vacant property in Bend covers the practical side, and how to reduce rental vacancy covers the speed.

How to Underwrite Wildfire Insurance on a Central Oregon Rental

Quote the ZIP before you commit capital. A seller's trailing twelve-month insurance expense tells you what the last owner paid under a policy that may not renew for you. Get a bindable quote from a carrier actually writing in that specific ZIP code, and ask directly whether they are writing new business there.

Reserve for a renewal-cycle shock, not an inflation trend. Three to five percent a year is the wrong assumption. Carry a reserve sized to the replacement premium in your market, and treat the difference as a real contingency rather than a rounding error.

Treat negative cash flow at standard-market insurance as a red line. If a deal is already underwater with a $1,500 premium, it has no margin to absorb a non-renewal. That is the single clearest signal in our model.

Document mitigation now and keep the paperwork. Defensible space work, Class A roofing, ember-resistant vents and Firewise participation are what a specialty carrier will actually price against. Deschutes County and the City of Sisters have both moved on R327 wildfire construction standards, and the county's Wildfire Mitigation Advisory Committee publishes the current framework.

Confirm your policy is a rental policy. An HO-3 left in place after a house became a rental is grounds for a denial at the worst possible moment, which is the most common and most expensive mistake we see.

Track it as a deductible expense. Premiums on a rental are deductible, which softens the after-tax hit without changing the cash problem. Our overview of rental property tax deductions in Oregon covers where it sits.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can my insurer non-renew my Oregon rental property because of wildfire risk?

Yes. Carriers price and decline using their own proprietary wildfire models, and repealing Oregon's state hazard map in 2025 did not change that. The wildfire-specific notice rights in ORS 742.277 are written for homeowner insurance, a term Oregon law defines to exclude policies covering an owner's interest in rental property, so a landlord policy may not carry the same disclosure protections.

Does the Oregon FAIR Plan work for a rental property?

Only as a partial fix. It caps dwelling coverage at $600,000, settles on actual cash value, provides no liability or theft coverage, and will not write vacant property. Most rental owners who land there pair it with a separate liability policy or a difference-in-conditions wrap, and a lender may not accept the combination.

How much has wildfire insurance actually increased in Bend and Sisters?

Oregon's statewide average went from about $583 in 2018 to just over $886 in 2023. Individual Central Oregon cases have moved far more: a Sisters-area policy from $5,000 to $10,000 after a 2025 Farmers cancellation, and a home northwest of Bend from about $1,000 to $9,000. The realistic planning range for a wildfire-exposed Central Oregon rental is $1,500 in the standard market against $4,800 to $9,500 after a non-renewal.

Ready for More?

Kolby Knickerbocker, Co-Owner, Legacy Property Management, Bend, Oregon

Sources: Oregon Division of Financial Regulation, Wildfire Emergency Order issued July 31, 2026 and extended August 31, 2026, and Bulletin DFR 2026-6 listing affected ZIP codes; Oregon Revised Statutes 742.277, 742.278, 746.600 and 90.323; Oregon FAIR Plan Association published dwelling coverage terms; Oregon Capital Chronicle and Lincoln Chronicle reporting on carrier withdrawal and FAIR Plan applications; KOIN and Central Oregon Daily reporting on the 2025 Farmers cancellations near Sisters; Oregon Legislature, Senate Bills 82 (2023), 83 (2025), 85 (2025) and 1540 (2026); Deschutes County Community Development, Wildfire Mitigation Advisory Committee; Legacy Property Management internal market data and portfolio averages for Central Oregon values, in-place rents, days to lease and tenancy length as of September 2026. Modeled figures assume 25 percent down and 6.95 percent thirty-year amortizing investor debt and will vary by property, borrower and carrier. This article is general information, not legal or insurance advice.