Thousands of families were moved on Tuesday when fires burnt down houses in the Pacific Palisades and Altadena, launching a house hunt on a regional scale while the victims traveled a tight market in search of houses for rent – or even to buy.
People are desperate, said local agents. Their houses are ash, and they are looking for stability – somewhere for their family to have done who is not a refuge, a house of a friend or a hotel room. Some owners are now increasingly increasing the rent, even beyond what temporary gougeage protections allow. And some potential tenants offer a one -year rent in advance in cash and engage in tender wars.
“Dozens and dozens of people continue the same properties,” said David Berg, a compass real estate agent at Smith & Berg Property Group. “Since Tuesday afternoon, our phones have rang hundreds of times.”
Friday, Berg and F. Ron Smith registered A newly built house In Brentwood, just a short hop of the Palisades. An hour after hitting the market, the list had 10,000 views on Redfin.
“We are trying to place many families in properties, but it becomes extremely difficult,” said Berg.
Last week, the pair listed a property in Santa Monica. No one took the trouble to visit the house – until Tuesday. Since then, they have shown it seven times and have already had two offers in hand.
Evan Fisher's family fled her five -bedroom house in the palisades. On Wednesday, he and his wife hit the rental market in search of something similar nearby to keep his three daughters – 17, 15 and 10 – in the same school. Regardless of the status of his house – he thinks it could still be standing – he realized that it would take a long time to return and wanted to provide as much normality as possible to his children.
“There are thousands of people trying to do the same,” said Fisher, a 49 -year -old psychologist.
Fisher has traveled hundreds of online announcements and visited new. He put applications on two houses, one in Bel Air and one in Beverly Hills.
“God wants, one of them trains,” he said.
The mass displacement of fires has already increased the prices of the sky, with rental rentals to ask too much, said agents. For many, short -term leases, especially furnished leases, are the obvious answer. Volunteers have compiled calculation sheets and available leases lists, but most are taken minutes or hours after the list.
Compass agent, Susan Kastner, said that so many families rush to obtain leases that each rental on the market receives several offers.
She had A list for sale On Avenue Las Casas in the Palisades, but she cannot take offers because she is not even sure that she is still standing and has not been able to check.
For other people who have lost their house, the purchase, even out of despair, have more sense. According to Smith, some families already receive insurance benefits and can choose to spend it on rent or a new mortgage.
“The process of obtaining an architect and going through the planning, authorization and construction process will probably take three years or more,” said Smith. “Thus, families assess whether to rent for three years or just buy something now.”
The natural landing points for people fleeing the palisades could be Malibu or Santa Monica, but Smith said that people were shopping in Venice, Westchester, Mar Vista and above the pass in the San Fernando valley.
“The real estate agents are flooded, who moved families each from the management of Santa Barbara to Palm Springs in South Bay,” said real estate agent Darby Woods.
Woods A A seven bedroom house For rent in the palisades which, except for the billiard room, survived the fire. She has not received any call on this subject – probably because people assume he has burned – so she plans to update the list to clarify that she is still standing, but probably quite smoked.
Shana Tavangarian Soboroff, a real estate agent from the Beverly Hills, evacuated from the Maison des Palisades du Pacifique de her parents Tuesday – where she stayed while her own residence was under construction nearby. Even in the middle of the tumult, she aligned customer calls looking for new excavations in the region.
“I have a long list of customers actively looking for a replacement,” said Soboroff on Wednesday, just a few hours before she learned at her parents' house is destroyed in the fire.
Soboroff said that she had lists for four rental properties – all unified houses – some of which had been sitting for a few months. Two were in West Hollywood, one in Beverly Hills and another in Venice. On Friday, the four was rented, at prices ranging from about $ 15,000 to $ 20,000 per month. In each case, the new tenants are people who have lost their house in the fire in the palisades, she said.
In the case of the Venice and one in West Hollywood list, the properties rented above their expected prices. But, said Soboroff, it was because the potential tenants offered increasingly high sums. “It is the panic of tenants who lost their house,” she said. “I have the impression that it happened on the last day, when they suddenly need to do it. They will therefore say: “I will pay all in advance for a year. They try to encourage the owner to choose them. »»
But two of the owners of Soboroff owners have chosen not to increase the rents requested on their properties. One of them, the lawyer for bodily injury, Andrew Alexandroff, owner of a house in Beverly Hills for which Soboroff negotiated a lease, said that he had been implemented by the interest of his property after the fires. “It was very horrible to try to take advantage of a disaster,” he said. “I deal with the disaster all the time as a lawyer for injuries. When people are the lowest, you try to help them. ”
Soboroff, who grew up in the Palisades, said that she was looking for houses for fifteen customers – 13 of whom she started working after the start of the palisades fire. She has lists for a handful of properties for sale, including one in Westwood and another in Century City.
Other victims are incumbent upon rebuilding as quickly as possible instead of buying something new, learning from the pandemic that delays are inevitable when thousands of people try to renovate their house at the same time.
The real estate agent Bret Parsons received a call from a client at 11 am on Wednesday, saying that his father's house had burned, and he needed the contact details for each good architect that Parsons knew. Parsons sent more than seven names and the customer set out on Wednesday afternoon, less than a day after destroying it from the house.
State prices gouge The rules have come into force on January 7 once Governor Gavin Newsom has declared the state of emergency and is supposed to slow down rental costs.
Under these rules, owners cannot generally invoice more than 10% above what they were billed or advertising before the state of emergency, according to the California procureur office.
The real estate broker Michael Nourmand, however, said that he believed that the unified rentals were announced about 20% higher than what he expected before fires.
“They get it-and quickly,” he said about owners.
Price prices protections are applied by the Office of the State Attorney General, as well as by local district prosecutors. Offerors can incur up to a year in prison and thousands of dollars in fines.
Anya Lawler, a defender of the California Rural Assistance Foundation policies, said that the owners are bound by the 10% ceiling even if there is a tender war in which someone is ready to pay more and that it said that the authorities are likely to apply Gouging protections in the past.
“I guess there are owners who legitimately know the law and are simply motivated to get as much as possible to take advantage of a terrible situation,” said Lawler. “Others are well aware and just think that they can damage the application.”
A property that has seen the change of rent is a four -bedroom house on Dellvale Place in Encino. According to Zillow, the property was announced for $ 9,000 a month on January 3.
Then, following fires and the state of emergency, the rent requested on registration changed, increasing almost 28% to $ 11,500.
In a telephone interview Thursday, the agent scoring Soheila Mirfakhrai said that she did not feel comfortable increasing the price, but the owner told her to do so without explaining why. She said that she did not know the prices' law.
After Mirfakhrai spoke with the Times by phone, the price was reduced to $ 9,800, an increase of almost 8.9% compared to the rent asking on January 3.
“He agreed to lower the price,” said Mirfakhrai in a text. “I told him it was not good and I would leave.”
Mirfakhrai said that she was not authorized to provide a contact number for the owner and that the owner could not be attached to comment.
“Some of the properties, they add nearly 50% to the rent,” said Heidi Jensen, a real estate agent helping inappropriate families in the fire of Palisades.
“I think it's so contrary to ethics and not pleasant to do it with people who need it.”
