KB Home Introduces Wildfire-Resilient Neighborhood
KB Home has introduced Dixon Trail in Escondido, California, the nation’s first new-home community designed to meet both home- and neighborhood-level wildfire resilience standards established by the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety (IBHS). The 64-home development incorporates fire-resistant materials, Class A fire-rated roofs, ember-resistant vents, and noncombustible buffers, aiming to reduce wildfire risks through strategic design and construction. Each home will receive the Wildfire Prepared Home™ Plus designation, and the community is set to be evaluated for IBHS’s Wildfire Prepared Neighborhood certification upon completion.
According to Businesswire, the Dixon Trail community will have 64 beautifully designed homes upon completion. Each home will be built to the Wildfire Prepared Home™ Plus standard and receive a designation certifying that it has met IBHS’s most stringent requirements for homesite-level fire mitigation. Dixon Trail will receive a provisional neighborhood-level designation based on its design, confirming that the community has implemented preventative measures to reduce the likelihood of initial ignitions from an approaching wildfire, protect against embers that could spark spot fires, and slow fire spread if ignitions occur. Dixon Trail is the first applied use of the researched-based, community-level mitigation strategies of structure separation, fire pathway reduction and wildfire-resilient building materials under IBHS’s new Wildfire Prepared Neighborhood standard. Once the neighborhood is completed and has passed an IBHS evaluation, a final Wildfire Prepared Neighborhood designation will be issued.
“In keeping with our tradition of innovation, we are pleased to offer today’s buyers the ability to choose a wildfire-resilient home and community,” said Jeffrey Mezger, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of KB Home. “We are proud that our new Dixon Trail community, with its system of mitigation features, is the first in the nation to meet IBHS’s wildfire resilience standards at the homesite level and at the neighborhood level.”