KB Home debuts its inaugural ‘fire-resistant’ neighborhood in California

Just months after raging wildfires destroyed thousands of homes in the Los Angeles area, California-based KB Home is unveiling what it calls its first “wildfire-resilient” community.

The development, in Escondido, just outside San Diego, will have 64 single-family homes when completed that all meet the wildfire resilience standards developed by the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety (IBHS), a nonprofit, scientific research and communications organization supported by property insurers. These standards are designed to protect the homes against the three major sources of ignition during a wildfire: Flying embers, flames and radiant heat.

A handful of homes in the development are now complete, with roughly 20 homes already sold. Three homeowners have moved in, according to KB Home.

The homes are built with covered gutters, enclosed eaves, noncombustible siding — like stucco and fiber cement — tempered-glass windows, and non-combustible patios, doors and roofing. They have six-inch vertical clearance using the concrete foundation, stucco and stone. They also incorporate defensible space with low-combustible vegetation at least 5 feet from the homes. Metal fencing is used throughout the neighborhood.

Steve Ruffner, regional general manager of KB Home’s coastal division, said he and his colleagues saw a fire-resistant home demonstration by IBHS at the Pacific Coast Builders Conference last summer and were impressed by the opportunity this type of community presented. Since KB Home had already broken ground on the development, they had to change gears quickly to incorporate the fire-resilient components.

“We had to change the architecture on the fly to a more stucco-oriented architecture with fire-resistant shutters, or fire-free shutters and doors and tempered windows. We were able to do that really quickly with the city, because they wanted to work with us. They really understood that this was important for their city,” Ruffner said.

He called it more of a research and development project to see what the costs might be and how to work with trade partners to lower that cost, although he wouldn’t say how much those costs increased.

The homes range from $1 million to the low millions, which tends to be a move-up price in that area for single-family, detached homes.

“We’re trying to get the cost to 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’s affordable to do it and it’s also got a good payback to the customer in a form of safety,” he added.

As climate change causes more severe drought in more areas of the country, focus is shifting to fire-resistant homes and communities.

During the the Palisades Fire in January, some homes that had been specifically built to fire-resistant standards remained unscathed while everything around them was destroyed. These types of homes, however, are largely one-offs by custom builders.

There has been progress in California on a home-by-home basis, according to IBHS, but KB Home is the first big production builder in the country that has designed and is fully building out 64 homes all to meet the wildfire-prepared neighborhood standard.

Among the specifications, homes are spaced 10 feet apart to help slow the progression of a fire.

“This subdivision built by KB Home, it’s really the test bed to show this and demonstrate it,” said Roy Wright, CEO of IBHS. “I know that KB Home already has two other projects here in Escondido, looking at duplexes and other kinds of town homes, and I do imagine that other builders are going to quickly follow suit. They’re going to be building the homes that Californians want to buy.”

Wright emphasized that part of the draw is not just to build a home that is survivable, but also one that is insurable. Insurance companies have been pulling out of California in droves, leaving homeowners with soaring costs and some without insurance entirely.

Though the homes are billed as fire-resilient, that doesn’t mean they are entirely risk-free. Homeowners and cities are going to have to make changes when it comes to non-combustible landscaping, elevations and even design. The real test will come in the future, should the community be in the line of a wildfire.

“Nothing is ever fireproof. We’re always just seeking to try to narrow those paths of destruction,” said Wright.