Investor Buys Burned Lots in Malibu Looking to Develop

A chunk of beachfront properties in Malibu now belong to a mysterious foreign investor.

An unidentified buyer has bought nine burned properties in the La Costa Beach area for a total of $65 million, The Malibu Times reported. The buyer, so far not publicly identified, has been working on the deals with Los Angeles-based real estate firm Weston James Group.

The investor honed in on La Costa beachfront lots with 40-foot frontages at minimum for future development. Architects are already working on drawing up plans, according to The New York Post. The lots weren’t publicly listed for sale, and those who sold reportedly weren’t interested in rebuilding homes, seawalls and onsite wastewater treatment systems, leading them to get rid of the properties off the market.

The unnamed buyer is purportedly willing to deal with the issues of rebuilding in hopes that new construction will attract wealthy buyers.

“He started building a team on his end of expediters, architects and kind of figured out what the best size lots and frontage would be to build on to eventually resell,” Weston Littlefield of Weston James Group told Realtor.com. “I’d say probably about 50 percent had sentimental value to their properties just based on memories, or their parents passed it down to them. But a lot of them, ultimately, just didn’t want to go through the rebuilding process because of how long they knew it was going to take to really come back.”

Of nearly 350 homeowners in the Palisades and Eaton fire zones, nearly 80 percent in the Palisades burn zone, including Malibu, planned to rebuild their homes, but 70 percent in the area said they may not return if rebuilding took three years or longer, according to a May survey by Project Recovery. In the Palisades burn zone, residents’ biggest concern was the “lack of leadership” from city and county officials to complete recovery and rebuilding.

Meanwhile, in Altadena, anonymous buyers — likely including some developers — are similarly snapping up burned lots, with many purchases being made through trusts and limited liability companies.

In the seven months since the blazes ripped through the Pacific Palisades and environs, Los Angeles County has issued 16 rebuilding permits in the area, according to the county’s permitting progress dashboard.

— Chris Malone Méndez