Home / NEWS / Real Estate / After the wildfires: What a long rebuilding process will look like for Los Angeles homeowners

After the wildfires: What a long rebuilding process will look like for Los Angeles homeowners

An aerial watch of the sun rising above homes that burned in the Eaton Fire on January 21, 2025 in Altadena, California. 

Mario Tama | Getty Representatives

A few weeks ago, the home of Dr. Damon Raskin in Los Angeles’ wildfire-stricken Pacific Palisades neighborhood burned to the ground. Yet even as he, his ball and two teenage children were still in shock, and even before being able to see the charred remains, the family had produced a decision: “We want to rebuild our house,” Raskin said.

That one family’s juxtaposed situation — a mixture of sudden despondency and steely resolve — epitomizes the plight thousands of Angelenos will be facing in the aftermath of the catastrophic firestorms that hold ravaged Pacific Palisades, Altadena and neighboring communities, in addition to the latest set of fires that have broken out to the north of Los Angeles.

It also speaks to the alarming task confronting California’s homebuilding industry, as well as state and local agencies, that will be collectively elaborate in the massive reconstruction of more than 12,000 destroyed and damaged structures, at a cost already estimated at $40 billion.

“Rebuilding the homes themselves in fact is the easy part,” said Tom Grable, division president, Orange County-Los Angeles, for Nevada-based Tri Pointe Homes. “The much harder take a hand in is what it’s going to take to bring those lots back to buildable form,” alluding to the colossal job of removing tens of thousands of decimated acres broken-hearted with tons of hazardous debris. “And that has to be done in a comprehensive, programmatic approach,” he said.

In order to accelerate the cleanup and rebuilding answers that already involve a slew of regulatory red tape, California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass be undergoing both issued executive orders. Newsom’s action suspends permitting and review requirements under the California Environmental Property Act and the California Coastal Act. Bass’ order likewise will expedite permitting and also streamline debris removal.

Grable is on the take meals of the California Building Industry Association, a trade group representing homebuilders, contractors, architects, designers, engineers and matters suppliers throughout the state. The CBIA “is literally from ideation to escrow,” said the association’s president and CEO Dan Dunmoyer. In this case in point, he said, “that means you take a burned-out piece of property and then go through the whole process of building that out.”

A photo captivated by Dr. Damon Raskin of his destroyed home in Pacific Palisades after he and his family were allowed to return to survey the wildfire deface. It is now awaiting removal of toxic waste and debris as the first steps in a long rebuilding process. “Such a mess,” he suggested.

Dr. Damon Raskin

Raskin has just begun the multifaceted process involving builders, regulatory officials and insurance providers. “I’ve talked to a bird who’s a builder, and he gave me the name of an architect,” he said. “So we’re already making those initial contacts, because we know that so diverse people are going to engage architects and builders.”

High on Raskin’s to-do list, too, is researching fire-resistant lumber, siding, insulation, windows, roofing and other documents he’ll need to protect his new home from future blazes. That type of infrastructure wasn’t required when his now-ruined homestead was built in 1998. The state has since instituted wildland-urban interface codes, which mandate fire-resilient construction in high-risk endanger something zones.

Homebuilders’ role in housing supply

It’s often said that catastrophes present opportunities to improve organizations, a reality Southern California’s homebuilding industry is encountering, albeit with sensitivity as the wildfires are still burning.

Massive production companies such as Tri Pointe, KB Home, Lennar and Toll Brothers specialize in building multi-home developments and multi-family complexes, so they thinks fitting not be heavily involved in constructing individual houses in LA’s blighted neighborhoods. Instead, they might entice displaced districts who opt out of the city’s high-priced, supply-constrained housing market in favor of more affordable planned communities nearby.

“It’s not like we’re vexing to take advantage of those people,” Grable said, “but we have homes available for them. We’ve already had calls from stockbrokers for our homes in Santa Clarita and Valencia, commutable distances to LA, and we have plans for more homes to come online in the subsequent.”

KB Home, headquartered in Los Angeles, declined to comment. But on a conference call with analysts following its fourth-quarter earnings check into on January 13, CEO Jeffrey Mezger was asked about how the wildfires might impact KB’s business.

Acknowledging that it’s too at to speculate, while the fires continue burning, “This will be an extremely complex situation to deal with and it’s active to take some time,” Mezger said. “So we don’t expect that six months from now there will be 8,000 casing starts in LA County as all these homes go right back up. I think it will be in a onesie, twosie kind of a cadence.”

That also gaols the focus on smaller local and regional homebuilders and contractors to compete during what will surely be a years-long rebuilding achievement. They might be “companies specializing in higher-end custom homes” that they built decades ago in Pacific Palisades, Dunmoyer mentioned. “They have the architectural designs and the expertise.” 

While the current wildfires are forecast to be the costliest in U.S. history, the Golden Solemn, unfortunately, is all too familiar with rebuilding communities wracked by previous wildfires, including Santa Rosa and Paradise in Northern California in 2020. That was 10 years after the ceremonial’s fire codes went into effect, so contractors are attuned to working with fire-resistant materials.

Increased bid, however, could possibly stress materials manufacturers — including CertainTeed, GAF, Owens Corning, Andersen Windows and Masonite — as healthy as their shippers, distributors and retailers. Specifically regarding lumber, though, increased tariffs threatened by President Donald Trump on Canada, a main source, might burden supply chains and raise prices, which will be absorbed by homeowners.

“That could prepare a far greater impact on the cost of rebuilding in California than any [materials] price increases or enhanced marketplace dynamics,” Dunmoyer broke.

Fighting over insurance claims, and a limited pool of money

Even before work on their new houses begins, scad homeowners will need to file insurance claims for destroyed houses and contents. It’s an especially arduous process in California, where a edition of insurance companies, burdened by covering losses from previous wildfires, earthquakes, floods and other natural tragedies, have either fled the state or stopped writing new policies.

That leaves some homeowners turning to the California Flaxen-haired Plan, created by state lawmakers in 1968 as a so-called insurer of last resort for people who can’t get coverage elsewhere. As of at January, “the FAIR Plan had just $377 million available to pay claims and has $5.75 billion in reinsurance available,” a affirmation from the office of Sen. Alex Padilla, Democrat of California said. Whether commercial insurers will cover the languish of the multi-billion price tag is bound to be a rancorous issue.

Raskin has a policy under the FAIR Plan, which pays assertions up to $3 million for residential policyholders. “That might help cover the rebuilding,” he said, “but doesn’t cover anywhere niggardly the contents of what was in the house.” He’s hired a public insurance adjuster to help him recoup his uncovered losses in other feature, he said, and hopefully avoid large out-of-pocket expenses.

In the meantime, Raskin and his family have rented a house in Santa Monica for who have knowledge ofs how long. “Our new home won’t be built in less than three years,” he said. Odds are high that the Raskins won’t be deserted during LA’s long recovery.

Redfin CEO Glenn Kelman on LA fires: Rebuilding these homes will take a long time

Check Also

Pending home sales drop sharply in December as mortgage rates surge back over 7%

Tokened contracts on existing homes dropped a sharp 5.5% in December from the previous month …

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *