diff --git a/hbase-server/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/hbase/master/balancer/StochasticLoadBalancer.java b/hbase-server/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/hbase/master/balancer/StochasticLoadBalancer.java
index 63ec0b50f93..6f0558132a3 100644
--- a/hbase-server/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/hbase/master/balancer/StochasticLoadBalancer.java
+++ b/hbase-server/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/hbase/master/balancer/StochasticLoadBalancer.java
@@ -1286,8 +1286,9 @@ public class StochasticLoadBalancer extends BaseLoadBalancer {
       }
 
       // We normalize locality to be a score between 0 and 1.0 representing how good it
-      // is compared to how good it could be
-      locality /= bestLocality;
+      // is compared to how good it could be. If bestLocality is 0, assume locality is 100
+      // (and the cost is 0)
+      locality = bestLocality == 0 ? 1.0 : locality / bestLocality;
     }
 
     @Override
@@ -1298,7 +1299,7 @@ public class StochasticLoadBalancer extends BaseLoadBalancer {
         return;
       }
       double localityDelta = getWeightedLocality(region, newEntity) - getWeightedLocality(region, oldEntity);
-      double normalizedDelta = localityDelta / bestLocality;
+      double normalizedDelta = bestLocality == 0 ? 0.0 : localityDelta / bestLocality;
       locality += normalizedDelta;
     }