Los Angeles, CA

Los Angeles County's earthquake score of 88 sits at the 95th national percentile—extreme band—and that is the dominant physical hazard in this dataset for this market. The 1994 Northridge earthquake caused an estimated $20 billion in damage, widespread infrastructure failure, and a lasting reminder that seismic risk here is not a low-probability tail event. The wildfire score of 81, at the 90th national percentile, adds a second layer concentrated in the hills and WUI-adjacent corridors. Heat at the 84th percentile completes a three-axis profile that varies sharply by submarket. What we noticed: Brentwood's hillside wildfire exposure changes the buyer checklist entirely—FAIR Plan dependence rises, earthquake plus fire coverage becomes a two-policy math problem, and roof material and defensible space shift from optional to underwriting-required. Woodland Hills sits in a different heat and WUI zone than West LA; buyers treating them as interchangeable are working with the wrong map. Downtown faces seismic retrofit questions and liquefaction-adjacent concerns that high-rise pricing does not automatically resolve. The 2018 Woolsey Fire demonstrated how proximity to active fire corridors affects air quality, evacuation logistics, and insurance appetite across the basin—not just at the fireline. Annual premiums range from $1,800 to $5,400, but earthquake insurance is often a separate discretionary purchase whose economics become harder to ignore after each significant seismic event. Heat is an operational cost issue more than an insurance issue in most LA submarkets. The risk picture here is not one story. It is seismic, then wildfire, then heat—in that priority order, depending on where the specific property sits relative to the fault and the ridgeline.

— Open Data Collective