If you're buying or selling a home in a California high or very high fire hazard severity zone, there's a real, currently-active disclosure law you need to know about - separate from, and already in effect ahead of, the newly-adopted Zone 0 rule. This is AB 38, codified as Civil Code §1102.19.
What the law actually requires
Since July 1, 2021, a seller of property in a high or very high fire hazard severity zone has to provide the buyer with documentation that the property complies with defensible space requirements (Public Resources Code §4291) or an applicable local vegetation management ordinance.
- If the local jurisdiction has its own ordinance requiring this documentation, the seller provides a copy of documentation that satisfies that specific ordinance.
- If the jurisdiction hasn't enacted such an ordinance, but a state or local agency (or a qualified nonprofit) does provide inspections with documentation for that area, the seller provides whatever documentation was obtained in the six months before entering the sale.
If the seller doesn't have documentation
This is the part that surprises a lot of people: the law doesn't require the seller to get an inspection before selling. If the seller hasn't obtained compliance documentation, the seller and buyer instead enter a written agreement under which the buyer agrees to obtain that documentation - generally within one year of the close of escrow, if the jurisdiction has an inspection program available.
Civil Code §1102.19(b)In practice, this means a lot of California real estate transactions in fire-prone areas close with this obligation simply passed to the new owner, not resolved at the point of sale.
What this law does not do
Nothing in §1102.19 - including a buyer/seller written agreement - limits a state or local agency's separate authority to enforce actual defensible space requirements. The disclosure requirement and the underlying compliance requirement are two different things; satisfying one doesn't satisfy the other.
Civil Code §1102.19(c)A bill that didn't make it: SB 911
SB 911 would have added real machinery to this process - requiring the seller to notify the local fire department of the written agreement, and requiring that fire department to actually conduct a compliance inspection if documentation still hadn't arrived a year later. It passed the Senate 33-0 and cleared the Assembly Appropriations Committee, but on August 30, 2026 it was ordered to the Assembly's inactive file, two days before the constitutional deadline for bills to pass. No further action was taken, so it did not pass in the 2025-26 session and is not law.
That means nothing in this section is currently required of you. Similar legislation could be reintroduced in a future session, so it's worth knowing the shape of what was proposed, but as of today the rules described above are the ones that actually apply.
We wrote up the whole story separately, including why the official bill page still calls it an "Active Bill," what "ordered to the inactive file" actually means, and whether the new Zone 0 rule makes this kind of bill unnecessary: SB 911 Didn't Pass. Here's What Actually Happened.
SB 911 (2025-26), Assembly history, Aug 30, 2026What Zone Zero Check is, and isn't, for this
Our Free CHECK and Photo CHECK Reports give you a real, address-based read on your property's Zone 0 and defensible space status - genuinely useful for getting ahead of a sale, or for a buyer doing due diligence before making an offer. But it's worth being direct: nothing on this site satisfies the actual Civil Code §1102.19 documentation requirement. That documentation comes only from CAL FIRE or your local fire department - request it directly at fire.ca.gov/dspace. Think of our report as preparation before that step, not a replacement for it.