The week restaurateur Tyler Wells reopened his Altadena restaurant after the Eaton fire, Compass agent Teresa Fuller snapped up a reservation.
The scene was both joyous and painful. The restaurant, formerly Bernee and now called Betsy, had great food — a farm-to-table concept whose white anchovy-topped Caesar salad and wood-oven cheesecake were renowned within weeks. But steps away, diners could see the hollowed-out Woodbury Building, a reminder of the destruction caused by January’s fire.
“I knew every single person in the restaurant,” Fuller said. “I got emotional. It was overwhelming.” She lives and works in nearby Pasadena, while her home gets remediated. She lost her storage space for staging supplies and business records while her office got tested for heavy metals.
On Saturday nights since, it’s become normal again to see Betsy patrons sitting outside on Altadena’s Mariposa Street, an ordinariness many have craved since Jan. 7 when the Palisades and Eaton fires ripped through, destroying more than 18,000 structures, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. Fuller also frequents the Good Neighbor Bar and West Altadena Wine and Spirits, all in a bid to bring life back.
The fires were devastating, but it was after the flames were tamed that all hell broke loose. Government leaders scrambled for a game plan, inflamed residents pointed fingers, onlookers added their two cents, insurance was a terror, tariffs took on a new toll and opportunists entered the picture.
Between the recovery, the outrage and the concern, the real estate industry in the region has settled into a new role. They’re not just brokers or builders behind the rush to rebuild; they’re also sounding boards, community leaders, experts in how to price homes when there are no comps and even economic development players who now understand the importance of normal routines — like Saturday nights out at an up-and-coming spot — returning in Altadena and the Palisades.
“We need to eliminate this fear of being a dead town,” Carolwood Estates’ Nichole Shanfeld said.
It’s all personal
Westside Estate Agency’s JJ Meyers was grabbing coffee and walking his dog when the Palisades Fire broke out.
He watched in real time as local news filmed the burning home of a friend’s parents, their family clock being carried out.
When the fires were controlled and the city began its recovery, the real estate industry picked up early on residents’ concerns and misgivings.
“Immediately, the [client] inquiries were, ‘What do you know that I don’t know?’ There was such a general distrust immediately,” Meyers recalled. “It was like they were coming to us because they didn’t believe the information they were getting. It was helping give people a general level of respect they didn’t feel they were getting.”
The bottom line: Brokers were living the disaster along with their clients.
“On a personal level, I love Kagawa. Every year, there were Halloween parties, Super Bowl parties, USC events, BBQs, you name it.”
Jacqueline Chernov, who joined the Beverly Hills Estates earlier this year from Compass, had her Palisades homes — a Spanish-style residence in the Huntington and the family property of 22 years in the Alphabet Streets — destroyed by the fire.
The number of temporary homes she’s lived in has now crept into the double digits; Chernov’s currently in a Malibu rental and hopes it can be home until her actual home is rebuilt. She does have a permit pulled for the Huntington home. At the Alphabet Streets property, she’s changed the plans and is not in a rush to rebuild.
Chernov was underinsured on both properties and is still awaiting money from State Farm. She described the insurance company — the largest home and auto insurer in the state — as difficult and chalks that up to a business model that holds the purse strings closed long enough for some people to give up on their claims. Hiring an adjuster to see the claims through to resolution and giving up 25 percent wasn’t an option.
“I’ve been doing this as another full-time job,” Chernov said of the insurance.
Her only break was a trip this summer to Amsterdam, for her daughter’s wedding. It was good to be out of town for a while, she said.
This is client service
On Jan. 22, a group of agents sat huddled in the living room of a Hollywood Hills home unsure of what was next and what they could do.
They discussed navigating new price-gouging rules, insurance, what the burned communities would be rebuilt into and, of course, Measure ULA.
The city of Los Angeles’ two-tier tax, also referred to as the mansion tax, has been a thorn in real estate’s side since it went into effect in April 2023. Charging a blanket 4 percent tax on properties starting at $5.3 million and 5.5 percent on those $10.6 million or more is absurd, the industry has repeatedly cried.
In the Palisades, which is within the city of Los Angeles, paying a tax on a sale that’s resulted from a natural disaster makes even less sense, some argue.
In early October, Mayor Karen Bass asked the city council to pass a temporary pause on the measure, offering a glimmer of hope.
“It should 100 percent be passed. It should have been passed at the beginning of any sales,” Shanfeld said. “In the Palisades, these poor people having to pay the city on land that they lost, nothing infuriates me more.”
For a while, in January and February, the workload was all fire-impacted clients, all the time. That included advocacy work, like the ULA fight.
The workload has shifted since then.
Some, like Chernov, split time between fire clients and regular listings in other parts of L.A. County. Others, like Shanfeld, focus on clients who sought whatever temporary housing they could get immediately after the fires now looking for better digs elsewhere. Still others have clients who are simply holding their lots and staying put completely outside of the burned areas in places such as Brentwood, Ojai, Santa Barbara or even as far as Tennessee.
Brokers who are still working with the fire-affected often hold their hands through challenges like dealing with insurance, which they are gaining first-hand experience in themselves.
Like Chernov, many clients have chosen to handle insurance on their own, rather than tap an adjuster for an additional fee, according to architecture firm Archicraft.
“From an insurance perspective, they want to pay as little as possible and, as a homeowner, you want to get as much as possible,” Archicraft U.S. Partner Tyler Vaughn said. “Most people don’t realize it’s a game of chess, and they don’t know the rules.”
The firm has one client in Altadena and six in the Palisades — five homeowners and a recreation center project in the Highlands under the Palisades Hills HOA. The firm and others like it have been the first line of assistance for some clients navigating insurance on top of the actual design process.
Rising construction costs of anywhere from $650 to $1,100 per square foot have exacerbated challenges. Meanwhile, insurance companies are coming back with quotes of $350 a foot.
“The insurance has been the most frustrating,” Chernov said. “I just got off the phone with one of the builders and they were saying clients needed to pick all their finishes, plumbing and appliances because they got notice everyone was raising prices by 9 percent.”
Political games
It was July 7, when a group of five protestors stood outside Pasadena City College’s Westerbeck Recital Hall holding up posters declaring “Home Sweet Hazmat” and “Step Up! Clean It Up!”
“There is no recovery without remediation,” shouted Grace Regullano, whose Pasadena home sits about 400 yards from the Eaton Fire’s southern edge. “We have been left alone. We are breathing the toxins in our walls. There is asbestos in my office. There is lead in my soil. My children cannot go home. All we are asking for is for Newsom to speak with us and explain why we are not getting support to clean up the toxins.”
There was no better way to grab the attention of problems fire survivors didn’t feel were being addressed than to gather where news outlets would be, waiting bored in the hot sun for security clearance to enter the auditorium and hear local and state officials discuss the state of rebuilding at the fires’ six-month mark.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom was among the speakers to tout what has now been repeatedly cast across press conferences and press releases as the “fastest recovery in modern history” when it comes to debris removal.
Chest pumping’s left a bad taste for some, especially with Newsom sitting for a cover story in October’s Bloomberg Businessweek, a splashy headline casting him as the leader of the Trump resistance. The article’s opening scene setter suggested January’s wildfires could have been the collapse of his political career.
Instead, he’s rebuilt his profile with vehicles such as Prop 50 — the ballot measure that would redraw Congressional district maps as pushback to Texas’ redistricting — and made housing advocates happy by aggressively going after non-compliant cities when it comes to residential development. Most recently, he signed off on Senate Bill 79 aimed at adding density close to transit stops.
That the National Guard and federal officers were deployed to MacArthur Park in Los Angeles’ Westlake neighborhood the same day as the six-month anniversary briefing in Pasadena may have helped further swing the trajectory for Newsom. The governor seized on the timing in a briefing with the media immediately following the presentations.
“What a disgrace that’s happening at MacArthur Park. What theater on the six-month anniversary of these fires,” Newsom spit out as the cameras rolled and pens flew across paper.
The politically charged atmosphere tied to the fires hasn’t been limited to Sacramento.
Some homes in the Palisades have signs calling for Bass’ resignation. In Altadena, it’s become an urban planning fight against gentrification and speculative development that’s led to the Altadena Not for Sale movement’s rise. Signs for the group stick out from the dirt or remaining lawns outside many homes.
“There’s so much misinformation,” Anthony Marguleas, a longtime Palisades broker and owner of Amalfi Estates, said in September, sitting in the kitchen of his Corsica Drive listing, in the Riviera neighborhood. “There’s a couple people online that are so politically charged, who are so anti-Mayor Bass and so anti-Newsom and so conspiracy theorist. I’m not going to talk about the whole political conversation. All I care about is our town being rebuilt.”
Many agents have taken the same route: heads down, focused on their jobs.
“I haven’t paid attention to the [media] coverage,” Meyers said. “My main focus has been the people that I can help.”
“I don’t listen to that noise,” Chernov said.
The only political gambit they’re happy to broach: ULA. “I mean, the only noise that could be positive is if the mayor really does take away ULA for fire victims,” she said. “That’s a gamechanger.”
Villains and bad guys
It was early August when news came out that Christie’s International Real Estate Southern California agents Weston Littlefield and Alex Howe represented an overseas buyer on the purchase of nine burned lots in Malibu totaling more than $65 million. That number’s since climbed to 15 lots.
Some on social media went berserk.
There were calls for Malibu City Council intervention. Others blasted the idea of “foreigners” buying U.S. land and shook their fists at the agents facilitating the deals.
“I think there’s a general misconception sometimes when a foreign investor quote-unquote makes a large investment into a city,” Howe said in August, at the time the deals were uncovered. “It can be perceived the wrong way.”
The buyer is a company called Zuru Tech US, an El Segundo-based subsidiary of Zuru Group in Hong Kong. The business was started by New Zealand toymaker brothers Nick and Mat Mowbray. Zuru Tech US is the company’s prefab housing arm.
Zuru Tech US Director of Operations Marcel Fontijn was shocked by the reactions to the lot purchases.
“They made us look like a villain, but we did not end up with 15 lots by putting guns to people’s heads,” he said.
“All of these people were ready or desperate to sell. It’s just like the guy that won the lottery [who’s] buying in the Altadena area. He’s not taking advantage of people. He’s not abusing people. People want to sell.”
“The only noise that could be positive is if the mayor really does take away ULA for fire victims.”
The Powerball winner is Edwin Castro, who is using the prize money to fund a real estate investment vehicle called Black Lion Properties. The company had acquired 13 lots as of Sept. 28, according to the Altadena Not for Sale group, with the total investment over $8 million.
Zuru Tech contemplated purchases in the Palisades but decided working with one municipality would be easiest. So far, there have been initial conversations with the city of Malibu; Fontijn estimated the first of the houses using the company’s factory-built homes could be installed starting in late 2026 in a process that takes roughly two to three months.
Fontijn said he still fields inquiries from sellers, although the company’s running close to the end of its spending spree. Still, the executive can’t shake how some spun the purchases into a narrative of another kind.
“I really felt we were doing something good and then some of the comments, they were nasty,” Fontijn said. “Some said that we were using Chinese money to kick people out of Malibu. Nobody kicked anybody out of Malibu, and it’s not Chinese money either. It’s U.S. money that we’re investing back into the U.S. economy. Yes, obviously, at the end of the day, we’re a business. We’ve all got to make some money, but it’s not about taking advantage of people that lost their homes, not at all.”
For agents, the nasty comments aren’t new, especially for communities that see themselves as unique and want to protect that from change.
“I understand the mindset of wanting to guard that character,” Fuller in Altadena said. “I also think that we have to trust our neighbors. They need to do what they need to do, and we can’t understand everyone’s circumstances. There has been a fear that developers would come in from the outside and build homes that might change the character of what was.” But, she added, many of the developer-built homes “are quite thoughtful.”
Somehow, the good guys are getting mixed in with the bad guys who have lowballed offers or are mounting what some would say are cheap-looking spec homes. Agents say inquiries from vulture investors have subsided since the fire’s early days. Many of the out-of-town buyers are not factoring in a parcel’s lineage or an entire community when running the numbers. A family or another buyer who does will beat the misinformed offers on any day, agents said.
“I understand this is a business, but we need to respect the process,” Meyers said. “I’ve been on the receiving end of disrespectful offers from people out of town: here’s an offer at one-tenth of your asking price with a very generic letter, not taking into account the pain these people might be going through, pouring salt in the wound.”
Home sweet home
Commercial tenants have generally come back first. The Palisades is expected to see the reopening of Rick Caruso’s upscale retail center Palisades Village next year, and a plan to redevelop the Gladstones site on Will Rogers State Beach into a Frank Gehry-designed two-story restaurant operated by Wolfgang Puck received a California Coastal Commission development permit last month.
Residential neighborhoods, by contrast, are in the very early stages of construction or environmental remediation.
Asilomar Boulevard, in the Palisades’ El Medio Bluffs neighborhood, counted 16 residences with views of the Pacific Ocean. Since January, it also overlooks the ruins of the community’s burned beachfront homes. It’s a sobering reminder of just how much more work is ahead of communities and the industry.
But slowly, frames of new homes have begun to go up.
Thomas James Homes will complete its roughly 6,500-square-foot lot in the Alphabet Streets later this month. It will be the first home rebuilt in the neighborhood.
Jeffrey Sandorf, vice president of Southern California division sales at Thomas James Homes, is a fourth-generation Palisadian, with kids who are the fifth. His family goes back 70 years, so rebuilding hits close to home for the Sandorfs.
Pre-fire Thomas James Homes completed more than 60 projects in the community and is now working with more than 30 families on their rebuilds. So far, the company has pulled seven permits and has 10 in plan check with the Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety.
The home, at 915 Kagawa Street, is meant to be a showcase for the community, an example of what the next phase here will look like, as well as a venue for workshops and education.
Right now, the company is guaranteeing a starting price of $650 per square foot and completion in one year or less. Services are in house, and Thomas James has a pre-curated set of plans for homeowners to choose from, which can shave weeks or even months off the design phase.
Sandorf was so busy with the workload he couldn’t take a call from Amalfi Estates’ Marguleas back in September when the broker phoned to say he was on his way to the Kagawa Street property to walk a reporter through the construction site.
“This is such a passion for me personally and I’m so proud that Thomas James Homes is going to be able to complete a house, furnish it and open it up to the public to give a sense of hope of what’s to come and give some tangibility to the rebuild,” Sandorf said.
It gives him chills to think about that milestone.
“On a personal level, I love Kagawa,” he said. “Many of my friends lived on Kagawa; they still own their properties. Every year, there were Halloween parties, Super Bowl parties, USC events, BBQs, you name it. I was on Kagawa a lot. When I drive up and down, it’s a much different landscape.”
That’s slowly changing. The agents, brokers, developers, architects and construction crews on the ground will tell you they’ve already turned the page on the jarring images of burned lots piled with debris that caught the nation’s attention and are living the next chapter.
“That was the story before,” Carolwood’s Shanfeld said. “Now, we’re in a different part of the story and it’s important that it be reflected because that’s where we’re at.”