FireBreak Pillar — Product Direction Brief

Origination & Underwriting

A FireBreak-originated referral pipeline for wildfire-rebuild homeowners — into construction financing and insurance placement, across multiple partners, before a lender ever opens a case.

Prepared for Kate · 2026-08-31 · Companion to the Lendistry Pilot (PR #2)

The Ask

Decision needed today

Approve the product direction: FireBreak originates its own homeowner pipeline from the destroyed-home universe and refers ready homeowners to multiple construction lenders and multiple insurers — not just Lendistry — with the two sides operating under different licensed capacities FireBreak actually holds today.

Why This, Why Now

Lendistry is not waiting passively for its own interest form — it's actively staffing an in-house acquisition function with a 750–1,000-borrower pipeline target. That's roughly two orders of magnitude below the addressable population. The opportunity isn't reaching homeowners first; it's reaching them with property-specific, data-driven outreach before someone else's generic partner network does.

~16,000 destroyed structures, Palisades + Eaton — the addressable population today
~1% rebuilt at 18 months — but 2,981 permits already issued, 1,796 homes already under construction
750–1,000 Lendistry's own in-house pipeline target — the competitive clock we're racing

The Model

Homeowner
Property identified from destroyed-home data (DINS + comps)
Outbound contact, rebuild-cost estimate shown
Referral-ready — interested, informed, consented
Referral
Matched & routed to eligible partners one or more lenders, one or more insurers
Partner reviews, responds — offer or status
Homeowner directs — a request to proceed, not a commitment
Activation
Loan closes, or coverage binds, or lender/self activates directly
Mitigation Case opens compliance tracking begins — this feeds the Lendistry Pilot (PR #2)

A Case only opens once financing or coverage is actually in place — never on a mere expression of interest. This keeps mitigation-compliance tracking clean regardless of who financed the rebuild.

One Business, Two Licensed Postures

FireBreak is a licensed insurance producer/broker today. FireBreak does not hold a lending broker license. The design reflects that asymmetry honestly rather than assuming a licensing posture we don't have:

Lending

Referral platform

  • Transmit consented referrals, surface each lender's own status
  • Never present, compare, or recommend loan terms
  • No compensation tied to loan terms

Insurance

Broker front end

  • Present quotes, compare carriers, take a placement instruction
  • Includes the FAIR Plan, as last resort after a market search
  • Every action verified against a real, current license/appointment

Differentiation

Compared toOur edge
Generic outreach with no real offerWe lead with a free permit + wildfire-standard + insurability review — a real, permit-grounded gap summary, not a cold pitch. Confirmed buildable today: LA City's own building-permit dataset is public, licensed for commercial use, and updated weekly.
Lendistry's own acquisition hireNot competing on counseling or partner networks — that's their hire's job. We win on property-specific, data-driven candidate identification, not generic outreach.
Zillow, Redfin & comps providersThey don't identify destroyed structures or model rebuild cost — that requires the DINS destroyed-structure layer this module builds.
Raw CAL FIRE DINS dataPublic, but a raw dataset. The edge is the scoring, referral-readiness, and partner-routing layer built on top of it.

A New, Confirmed Capability

A research spike verified that LA City publishes its own building-permit filings publicly — licensed for commercial use, updated weekly, and rich enough to name a homeowner's actual permit history and contractor of record. Two things follow directly:

Free homeowner review

Lead-generation hook

  • Real permit + IBHS wildfire-standard gap summary, given free, before any ask
  • Delivered regardless of whether the homeowner engages further
  • Later upsell: paid permit-compliance oversight through the rebuild

Partner sourcing

Contractor & vendor network

  • Same permit data names licensed contractors and architects of record
  • Feeds candidate leads into our own partner-referral panel
  • A lead for outreach and vetting — never an automatic partner

One real gap: this confirmed source covers the Palisades (City of LA). Eaton (unincorporated Altadena, LA County) has no equivalent public source confirmed yet — offered there today with a plainly-stated "more limited" caveat, not silently treated as equal coverage. A paid data source (Shovels.ai) is a candidate fix, not yet evaluated.

Where Things Stand

Designed

Multi-partner referral & offer modelSix rounds of technical review — matching, consent, transmission, offer comparison, and activation are fully specified.

Blocking

One shared schema field needs a decisionThe existing Case record assumes exactly one lender and a scheduled inspection. Self-funded and insurance-only rebuilds need that loosened — a small, proposed fix, pending sign-off from the Lendistry Pilot's owner.

Open

Initial partner rosterWhich lenders and insurers join the panel at launch, beyond Lendistry, is a business decision this design doesn't make.

Open

LA County permit coverageConfirmed for Palisades, not yet confirmed for Eaton/Altadena — see "A New, Confirmed Capability," above.

Deeper Detail