It’s Thursday: Caravan day for agents in Altadena and Southern California’s broader Foothills.
Agents, who were out for a day of new listing previews, chatted over coffee at a cul-de-sac where a nearly finished home, expected to be the first developer-completed residence in Altadena early this year, was the draw.
Compass agents Jeff Salcido and Mark Marquez hold the listing, at 3245 Arrowhead Court. It’s priced just under $1.9 million and is one of 15 Altadena residences to be built by the developer New Pointe Communities.
Salcido’s brother and sister-in-law once lived there. But in April, they decided to sell the lot to New Pointe for $635,000.
“They had a baby on the way, and trying to have your first baby, rebuilding and going through the whole process was just a bit more than they wanted to take on,” Salcido said. “For them, it was a really hard decision.”
Aside from the backstory, and the fact that the neighboring properties are dirt lots, burned by last January’s Eaton Fire, the agent gathering would have been unremarkable.
But those lots are now primed for rebuilding, a sign of the effort that has gone into the recovery since the Palisades and Eaton fires destroyed a combined 16,000 single-family and commercial structures a year ago.
Now, green shoots are turning into a broader comeback, as real estate surveys the progress — what’s sold and what’s being built — and property owners make their own decisions to move forward on new homes, or move away. So far, the permitting pipeline is in sync with that activity, and developers are keeping up, although some wonder what 2026 holds, as the pace picks up.
Nearly 3,600 residential properties in the Eaton and Palisades fires’ burn zones have already filed for permits related to rebuilding between Feb. 1 and Dec. 8, according to an analysis of Los Angeles County data by TRD Data.
“It could be a 1,000-square-foot cottage or an 8,000-square-foot architecturally significant home, as long as there are no conflicts to code and everything’s buttoned up, you’re going to get approval.”
Altadena appears to be moving at a faster clip, accounting for 40 percent of the total properties seeking permits. Pacific Palisades accounts for 15 percent, while Malibu is 9 percent, according to TRD Data.
Closings offer another view of what’s moving and for how much. Market watchers are waiting for land sales to bottom out and an upward trajectory in values to become clear.
Perhaps not surprisingly, Malibu lays claim to the priciest lot sale post-fires, according to a review of Zillow records. The deal, one-third of an acre at Carbon Beach, closed in August for $14 million; it’s located at 22102 Pacific Coast Highway. At one time, it held a nearly 5,000-square-foot home with 60 feet fronting the ocean.
The Palisades’ priciest lot sale since the fires, 1511 Old Oak Road, closed in September for $9.4 million.
Buyers can get more for their money in Altadena, where the community’s priciest lot sale was in November for $2.1 million. The nearly 1-acre lot at 1625 Braeburn Road sits just above the Altadena Golf Course in the Country Club neighborhood.
Permit prognosis
Spreadsheets alone suggest a seemingly daunting multi-year construction process: If some Woolsey Fire residents in Malibu are only just now moving into their rebuilt homes, seven years after that blaze, what’s in store for Palisades and Eaton survivors?
At the heart of that answer is whether the expedited permitting process promised post-fires is working. By all accounts, it’s so far, so good — despite some very loud criticisms of bureaucratic inertia in various aspects of the recovery.
Developer Rick Caruso has been unfiltered in his critiques, but on a Friday in December, he was nothing but smiles and praise for Thomas James Homes executives celebrating the completion of their first Palisades rebuild at 915 Kagawa Street, which is partially the result of an expedited permitting process.
The developer — dressed in a crisp white shirt under a navy blazer, black slacks and double-monk strap shoes — was on site to lend his support to the project, a Thomas James Homes spokesperson said.
Some in the rebuild effort qualify the critiques with the reality that construction simply takes time. In Malibu and certain parts of the Palisades, rocky hillsides, sandy beaches and other challenging terrain can tack more time onto a project than you’d need with simple, flat lots. That’s on top of the human element, where many homeowners have only reached the point, a year later, where they’re ready for the design phase.
“We’re very early in the Palisades,” Matt McRoskey, founder of steel framing supplier Ghost Factory, said. “A lot of folks needed to take some time. They needed six months to land their long-term rental, to get their inventory lists and they weren’t even thinking about hiring architects for the first six to 12 months. But now they’re ready.”
Ghost Factory’s steel is forming the new bones for entrepreneur Lisa Price’s home at 854 Galloway Street, about three blocks away from the Kagawa Street property.
McRoskey came into the project after Price had already pulled a permit to build with wood. His firm had to apply for a supplemental permit for the change.
The application was 300 pages of engineering calculations, followed by a 30-minute in-person meeting at the permit office. Ghost Factory warned Price that approval might take weeks, or even months.
Instead, the office granted the change in seven days, according to McRoskey who has since submitted plans for two other homes, including a 2,500-square-foot home along Sunset Boulevard in the Palisades’ Huntington neighborhood and an over 4,000-square-foot property near Palisades Charter High School.
McRoskey, who grew up in the Palisades, said his parents and other relatives in the community are in talks with architects and will eventually turn to Ghost Factory once their designs advance.
He finds the permit system is working well, regardless of a project’s size or complexity.
“It could be a 1,000-square-foot cottage or an 8,000-square-foot architecturally significant home, as long as there are no conflicts to code and everything’s buttoned up, you’re going to get approval,” he said.
In many instances, he pointed out, delays can be self-inflicted, since an understaffed L.A. Department of Building and Safety is not new.
Thomas James Homes CEO James Mead touted his firm’s efficient permitting record to press outside his company’s Kagawa Street property. Its average permitting time with the city of Los Angeles is less than 60 days.
“This isn’t entirely about a streamlined process,” Mead said. “I think the city is really trying hard. It’s about what you can do if you’ve got a professional approach to permitting.”
New Pointe founder and President Scot Sandstrom said about as much in the case of Altadena, where permitting is done through L.A. County. While the typical permit process is a year, the Arrowhead Court property that brought the Compass caravan out in December was permitted in four months.
Sandstrom said he has nothing but praise for the county, despite some of the negative chatter.
“I understand for people who have never built a home, how it can be difficult,” he said. “Homes are complex.”
The unknown now is whether the system can support the expected flood of permits this year.
“So it’s going to start getting extremely busy in the first half of 2026 and it will be interesting to see how the city reacts,” McRoskey said. “The department will get absolutely flooded at some point.”
Large or small
If anyone was keeping score on first completions in the burn zones, it would seem the larger developers have command of the race.
Those firms would argue that’s where their building expertise shines.
In Thomas James Homes’ case, Mead touted the company’s single-lot experience. That is, its skill in building individual homes as opposed to tract housing in master-planned communities.
The CEO estimated the company could be under construction on more than 100 homes next year, with the bulk of that work done as early as the end of 2026. It’s promising a starting price of $650 per square foot in construction costs.
Many rebuilding with other developers have said quotes are well above $1,000 per square foot, as materials sourcing and supply chains lurch under the strain of tariffs, increased demand and other factors.
At New Pointe, the company has the added experience of rebuilding post-fires, going back to San Diego County’s Witch Creek Fire. Those flames broke out in October 2007 and burned more than 1,000 homes.
New Pointe initially bought 16 lots in six neighborhoods after the fires and rebuilt those properties.
Now, it’s doing the same in Altadena, purchasing lots from homeowners like Salcido’s brother and sister-in-law, who are unable to move forward with rebuilding.
It’s a touchy subject, given the negative pall cast around corporates buying lots across the burn zones.
“There’s room for both,” Sandstrom said of the role of large homebuilders and individual homeowners in a speedy recovery. “There are 4,000 homes here that need to be rebuilt. We need everybody to be a part of it. Not just homeowners rebuilding or builders rebuilding.”