Insuring your home isn’t as easy or as cheap as it used to be. As we’ve been reporting the past few years, you’re paying more than ever. And families have told us they fear losing their home policy with little notice. But now, two companies say they are partnering to shake up homeowners’ insurance coast to coast.
To understand the situation, we headed to Wine Country.
“This is a dream home for my wife and I,” said Healdsburg homeowner Greg Dexter. At the Dexter home, you might expect to see sprinklers on the sprawling vineyard and in the flowery garden. But Mr. Dexter points up.
“You can see the copper pipe here and the little emitters,” he said. Dexter has sprinklers curiously installed on his eaves and roof.
“It’s like a giant car wash,” he said, describing his home’s self-defense rig to shield against wildfire. His family paid dearly to install the system after his insurance company dropped him because his home was too risky.
“It’s not gonna stop the vineyard from burning, but it’s gonna sprinkle the whole house,” Dexter said. “It’ll rain around the whole house and the embers will go out.”
The Dexters have Frontline, a system that automatically sprays down a house with a light mist when a wildfire burns close by. “This takes it down to about 10% chance of burning when the sprinkler system’s operating,” Dexter said.
Last year, the L.A. fires put Frontline sprinklers to the test. We saw firsthand. In Palisades, a Frontline customer’s home was still standing. But all their neighbors’ homes had burned down.
We asked homeowner and Frontline customer Vardaan Vasisht what his home would look like today if he did not have the sprinklers. “I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t be there,” he said.
Frontline was founded by ecologist Harry Statter. “We created almost like a water bubble,” he said in April, 2025. Back then, Statter told NBC Bay Area he had 61 customer homes in the L.A. fire zones. 59 of those homes survived.
He said insurance companies took note. “We’ve had a number of insurance companies contact us,” Statter said. They want to develop programs.”
That’s now happening. Frontline says it is now partnering with Stand insurance, a San Francisco startup we first showed you in 2024.
“We’re a young company,” said CEO Dan Preston.
He says Stand’s team — including aerospace experts, physics, and artificial intelligence engineers — saw how well the Frontline nozzles performed. Stand then developed a new computer model. And now, Stand will offer Frontline homeowners a discount up to 25%.
“Frontline customers can get a discount because we know that models out to have a less risky home,” Preston said.
Not everyone can afford something as elaborate as a sprinkler system like Frontline, costing tens of thousands of dollars, depending on how big your home is. But there’s something for the rest of us in this new deal.
Preston told me their new modeling, called the Stand World Model, can help other homeowners, like you, get cheaper coverage when you make less expensive updates to your home. It starts with a 3D view of your home’s risks. Stand can then manipulate that with your future efforts to mitigate those risks.
“We can basically pinpoint,” Preston said. “These trees: if you remove them, your premium comes down by $5,000. Or if you change to a different type of siding, it’ll come down by $6,000.”
Besides the Stand World Model helping with California’s insurance crisis, Preston said Stand is looking at Florida’s equally frustrating insurance market.
Big name insurance companies say they are starting to use catastrophe models, too. The American Property Casualty Insurance Association told us, “Insurers are rewarding wildfire mitigation, but the biggest savings come when homeowners take a comprehensive, science-based approach—not just one-off fixes.”
Back in wine country, Greg Dexter says his family’s personal insurance crisis is over. “Crisis is a strong word, but it really is. for many, many people, their home is their most valuable asset,” he said.
The Dexters have assurance with their new sprinklers, plus insurance, finally. Next, Greg would love to see other carriers resume selling policies and bring back competition. He believes his home is a good bet for an insurance company.
A model home, of sorts.
“Oh yeah,” he said.
Clinton Mora is a reporter for Trending Insurance News. He has previously worked for the Forbes. As a contributor to Trending Insurance News, Clinton covers emerging a wide range of property and casualty insurance related stories.