HardenUp

Turn home upgrades into insurance discounts — see which fixes lower your premium and keep your policy from being non-renewed, ranked by payback.

Date: 2026-06-04 Form factor: Web app (single-page; mobile-friendly) Status: Prototype

What it is

HardenUp is a planning tool for homeowners caught in the 2026 property-insurance crunch — soaring premiums, non-renewal notices, and disappearing coverage. You describe your home and its hazard, and HardenUp scores its insurability (how likely you are to keep coverage) and turns a catalog of mitigation upgrades into a ranked action plan. For each upgrade it shows the premium discount it unlocks, the non-renewal risk it cuts, the upfront cost, and the payback period — then recomputes your projected premium and insurability score live as you toggle upgrades, tune the discount cap, or set an upfront budget.

The prototype runs a real wildfire-exposed California home through an in-browser engine: toggle any of 13 mitigation measures, drag the premium / horizon / discount-cap / budget sliders, hit Auto-pick best ROI within budget, and watch every dollar figure, the insurability meters, and the renewal verdict update instantly.

Who it serves

Homeowners in high-hazard areas — wildfire (CA, CO, the West), wind (Gulf and Southeast), hail, and water-damage-prone regions — who have either received a non-renewal notice or are facing a renewal quote they can't absorb. The specific pain: people are told their policy is being dropped or repriced, and they're told vaguely to "harden the home," but nobody tells them which specific upgrades actually move their premium, by how much, or whether it's worth the cost. Concrete personas:

• The non-renewed homeowner with 30–60 days before coverage lapses, who needs to know the fastest, cheapest measures that make the home insurable again before shopping carriers or the FAIR Plan.
• The sticker-shocked renewer whose premium jumped and who wants the highest-ROI mitigation to claw it back — not a $7k siding job when a $480 vent retrofit unlocks most of the same credit.
• The proactive buyer in a WUI ZIP who wants to harden before the next renewal cycle and document everything the carrier requires.

Why it could be profitable

Monetization is freemium consumer SaaS with strong affiliate and B2B layers:

• Free: Score one home, see the discount/payback for every measure.
• Pro ($6/mo): Multiple homes, renewal-deadline reminders, carrier-specific discount tables, photo/document storage for proof-of-mitigation, and "best-order" project sequencing.
• Affiliate / lead-gen revenue: Each measure links to vetted contractors (vent retrofits, defensible-space crews, roofers), home-inspection services (a wind-mitigation inspection alone cuts FL premiums 20–40%), and insurance marketplaces — HardenUp earns referral fees, monetizing the free tier without a paywall.
• B2B: License the engine to insurers and agents as a retention/renewal-rescue tool (carriers want policyholders to harden — it cuts their losses), and to mortgage servicers who lose money when borrowers go uninsured or force-placed. Billed per-seat or rev-share.

The timing is the thesis. Homeowners-insurance premiums rose in 95% of U.S. ZIP codes from 2021–2024; the U.S. Treasury and Brookings document that non-renewal rates in the highest-risk ZIPs run ~80% above low-risk areas, and the five biggest insurers didn't pay 44% of claims last year. Meanwhile regulators are actively wiring mitigation to price: California's "Safer from Wildfires" program requires insurers that price on wildfire risk to credit a defined list of home-hardening and defensible-space measures, and three new Lara-sponsored laws took effect Jan 1, 2026 (including AB 1, which keeps the mitigation list current, and AB 888's "Zone Zero" grant program). Florida's wind-mitigation credits are long established. The discounts and the desperation both exist — what's missing is a tool that tells a specific homeowner which upgrade, how much it saves, and whether it pays back. HardenUp is that tool.

Form factor & scope

Single-page web app, sized for mobile and desktop. Scope-locked to the decision layer — HardenUp does not bind coverage, file claims, or pull live carrier rates; it is the planner that sits in front of your renewal. The minimum viable scope demonstrated here:

1. See your home's insurability score (now vs. with your plan) and projected premium.
2. Toggle any of 13 mitigation upgrades; each shows discount, risk-reduction, cost, and payback.
3. Re-tune the model — current premium, how long you'll stay, the carrier's discount cap, and an upfront budget.
4. Auto-pick the best set of upgrades that fits a budget, ranked by ROI.
5. Filter by peril, sort by payback / discount / risk / cost, and show only regulation-backed credits.
6. Read a plain renewal verdict (high-risk / improving / renewable) and export the plan as text.

How to run it

1. Open index.html in any modern browser (Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Safari).
2. Toggle upgrades on/off, or click ⚡ Auto-pick best ROI within budget to let the engine choose.
3. Drag the premium, horizon, discount-cap, and budget sliders — the KPIs, insurability meters, premium projection, and renewal banner recompute instantly.
4. Filter by peril, change the sort, or check regulation-backed only.
5. Click Copy plan or Download .txt to export your hardening plan grouped by in-plan vs. optional.

No build step, no API keys, no accounts. Sample data is embedded inside index.html as a <script type="application/json"> block so the page works directly from file:// with no local server. A standalone copy of the same data also lives at sample-data.json in this folder.

What's in this prototype

• A discount/insurability engine (script.js) that stacks per-measure discounts under a carrier cap, projects the resulting premium, and rolls up an insurability score from baseline + selected risk-reduction points.
• A standalone-payback ranking so each measure is sortable by cost ÷ annual saving regardless of what else is selected — the vent retrofit beats the siding job on ROI even though siding saves more dollars.
• A greedy "best ROI within budget" auto-picker that selects measures by value-per-dollar until the budget or the discount cap is hit.
• A 13-measure catalog for a wildfire-exposed home spanning roof & vents, defensible space, structure hardening, community, and water/systems — tagged regulation-backed (CA Safer from Wildfires) vs. voluntary carrier credit, with two measures already marked "done" so the baseline rate is honest.
• Live controls — premium, planning horizon, discount cap, and upfront-budget sliders, plus peril filter chips, a sort dropdown, and a regulation-backed-only toggle.
• KPIs + dual insurability meters + a premium before/after and a renewal verdict banner that changes (high-risk / improving / renewable) with the plan.
• A plain-text plan export (copy or download) grouped by in-plan vs. optional, with discount, cost, and proof reminders — the artifact you'd take to your agent.

Roadmap

• Carrier-specific discount tables (each insurer credits the same measure differently) and state packs beyond CA — FL/Gulf wind-mitigation, hail, and water.
• A guided home intake (address → hazard zone, roof type, defensible-space status) instead of a fixed sample home, with auto-classified measures.
• Proof-of-mitigation storage — upload photos, inspection reports, and certificates the carrier requires to apply each credit, with a renewal-deadline countdown.
• Contractor and inspector marketplace with vetted local pros per measure (the affiliate revenue engine).
• An insurer/agent B2B dashboard that surfaces the cheapest path to make a flagged policy renewable.
• "Best order" project sequencing and financing options (PACE, AB 888 grants) for the higher-cost structural measures.

Sources

• U.S. Department of the Treasury — Homeowners Insurance Costs Rising, Availability Declining — non-renewal rates ~80% higher in highest-risk ZIPs; premiums up in 95% of ZIPs 2021–2024.
• Brookings — Where rising climate risks and insurance costs will hit hardest — geography of premium spikes and coverage withdrawal.
• California Dept. of Insurance — Safer from Wildfires — insurers pricing on wildfire risk must credit a defined list of home-hardening and defensible-space measures.
• CA Dept. of Insurance — Nine new laws take effect Jan 1, 2026 — AB 1 keeps the Safer from Wildfires list current; AB 888 "Zone Zero" home-hardening grant program.
• U.S. News — The 5 Biggest Home Insurers Didn't Pay 44% of Claims Last Year — claim-denial backdrop driving distrust and the need to stay insurable.
• AgencyHeight — Home Insurance Nonrenewal in 2026: What to Do Immediately — wind-mitigation inspections cut FL premiums 20–40%; defensible space improves CA insurability; 30–60 day notice windows.