Earthquake retrofits, Brace + Bolt grants, and the insurance discount

Why older homes are the target

Most California houses built before 1980 sit on a raised foundation with a crawl space. The house is held up by short wood walls, called cripple walls, and in many cases was never bolted to the concrete beneath it. In strong shaking the house can slide off its foundation or the cripple walls can collapse, which turns a repairable event into a total loss. A brace-and-bolt retrofit anchors the sill plate to the foundation and sheathes the cripple walls with plywood so they resist sideways force. It is a crawl-space job, not a rebuild, and on most homes it takes days.

The CEA discount, by home type

The CEA gives a verified retrofit a premium discount on a pre-1980, wood-frame, one-to-four unit home (CEA premium discounts).

To qualify, the water heater must be strapped to the frame, any cripple walls must be braced to California Building Code standards, and a post-and-pier or unreinforced masonry foundation needs a continuous foundation under the exterior bearing walls with the house anchored to it. Homes built 1980 or later are assumed to meet the standard and get neither the discount nor the penalty.

The second benefit: lower deductibles come back

The CEA does not offer its 5 and 10 percent deductible options on a pre-1980 wood-frame home off a slab foundation that has not been retrofitted (CEA coverages and deductibles). The lowest you can choose is 15 percent, which on a $600,000 home is $90,000 out of pocket. A verified retrofit reopens the 5 and 10 percent options, so on top of the discount you get the choice of a $30,000 or $60,000 deductible instead. For many households that is the more valuable of the two benefits.

The Earthquake Brace + Bolt grant

Earthquake Brace + Bolt (EBB) is a state program run by the California Residential Mitigation Program, a joint effort of the CEA and the Governor's Office of Emergency Services. It pays homeowners up to $3,000 toward a code-compliant brace-and-bolt retrofit, and households with income at or below $89,040 can apply for up to $7,000 in supplemental funds, which can cover most or all of a typical job. More than 32,500 homeowners have received grant assistance since the program began in 2013, and the 2025 round extended eligibility to owners of rental homes (CEA press release, August 20, 2025).

• Registration opens in windows and is limited to eligible ZIP codes, so check the program before you sign a contract
• The house must be a pre-1980 wood-frame home on a raised foundation, typically no more than four feet of cripple wall
• Work must follow the standard plan set (California Existing Building Code Appendix Chapter A3) or an engineered design
• You choose the contractor from the program's list or do the work yourself with permits
• The grant is paid after a final inspection and permit sign-off

The order to do it in

• Confirm the house is a candidate: pre-1980, wood frame, raised foundation, cripple walls under four feet
• Register for Earthquake Brace + Bolt when a window opens; do not start work before you are accepted or the grant will not apply
• Pull the permit and have the work done to the Appendix A3 standard plan set, including the water-heater strap
• Keep the permit final, the contractor's invoice, and photographs of the bolts and sheathing; the CEA verifies the retrofit from this file
• Tell your broker or home insurer the retrofit is complete and ask for the discount and the lower deductible options; neither is applied automatically

The last step is the one people miss. A discount an underwriter cannot verify is a discount you will not get, and the same file also moves eligibility with private earthquake carriers. Bring it to us and we will run the CEA and private quotes with the retrofit credited: see California earthquake insurance.

What a retrofit does not do

It reduces the chance that the house leaves its foundation. It does not stop the chimney from coming down, prevent a soft-story collapse over an open garage, or keep the contents on the shelves. Those are separate fixes. And it does not replace insurance: the retrofit lowers the odds of a total loss, the policy pays if one happens anyway. Together they cover the risk from both ends.

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