People are buying up burned lots in L.A. Should they be concerned about future fires?

Firefighters stand near a burning house in Altadena, California on January 8, 2025. (Fred Greaves/Reuters via CNN Newsource)

In pricey Los Angeles, where single-family homes under US$1 million are hard to come by, even destructive fires haven’t deterred willing buyers.

This month, a burned lot in affluent Pacific Palisades sold for nearly $1.2 million — hundreds of thousands over its asking price — despite the land remaining uninhabitable. In the days following that sale, more burned properties have changed hands in the Palisades and Altadena — neighbourhoods on different sides of a city devastated in January by wildfires.

In the aftermath of one of the costliest disasters in US history, governments and communities often push to quickly rebuild. There is added pressure for a speedy recovery for California, which has the world’s fifth-largest GDP and with Los Angeles set to host the upcoming FIFA World Cup and Summer Olympics.

However, some economists and environmentalists reject a typical response to rebuilding. As climate change intensifies natural disasters, local governments should think proactively, buying up damaged property from homeowners in disaster-prone areas and building “buffer zones” to better prepare for when the next extreme weather event hits, said Char Miller, a professor of environmental analysis at Pomona College.

The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection estimated that more than 16,000 structures were damaged in the Palisades and Eaton fires.

“It’s going to take billions of dollars to recover in LA. What if we spend some of that money proactively to reduce the amount of money we would have to spend after a natural disaster again?” Miller said.

Proponents say the government and taxpayers would save on future firefighting and relief costs by clearing homes from dangerous areas. In addition, the buyouts could help stabilize the insurance market, as homeowners nationwide face declining coverage and ever-increasing premiums.

Natural disasters like floods, hurricanes and wildfires have resulted in multibillion-dollar payouts. In 2024, the United States had 27 confirmed weather disaster events with losses exceeding $1 billion each, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

However, it is unclear whether such a plan would get support from the federal government. While President Donald Trump has focused his attention on cutting excess government costs in his first month in office, he has also railed against programs intended to tackle the effects of climate change.

California homeowners shoulder the cost

Though many residents who lost their homes might find it difficult to accept a buyout, it’s not a novel concept. There have been large-scale buyout programs after major hurricanes, such as when local governments in Houston bought out nearly 200 homes in flood-prone areas after Hurricane Harvey in 2017.

In California, urban sprawl has added to the city’s fire risk, as a growing number of homes have been built on land designated as the wildland-urban interface — areas that are high risk for catastrophic wildfires, according to Judson Boomhower, an assistant professor of economics at the University of California San Diego and a contributor to the US National Climate Assessment.

Between 1990 and 2020, the number of homes in these California areas grew by 1.3 million, according to data from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Getting rid of entire swaths of Los Angeles neighbourhoods might prove unpopular amid California’s already-extreme housing shortage, but Boomhower said focusing on expanding the city upward and focusing on new multi-family apartment buildings, rather than outward, would be safer from a wildfire-risk perspective.

Building in areas prone to natural disasters can increase insurance costs for even those homeowners who don’t live in extreme danger zones, according to Penny Liao, an economist at Resources for the Future, a nonprofit focused on improving environmental and economic outcomes.

“The fires will directly impact the availability and affordability of insurance in California in general,” Liao said. “When we build in a risky area, obviously there’s a question of whether people truly understand the risk.”

Earlier this month, California’s FAIR plan, the state’s last-resort fire insurance provider, said it would need to impose a special charge of $1 billion on insurance companies so as not to run out of funds. Those insurance companies can pass a portion of that charge on to homeowners.

Rebuilding with stronger materials

Insurance and wildfire risks haven’t been a major concern for prospective buyers in Altadena and the Palisades, said Richard Shulman, the Los Angeles real estate agent who listed the first burned lot in the Palisades this month. Schulman said he fielded around 60 or 70 calls from interested buyers for the listing. None asked about the area’s future fire risks.

“All the people I spoke to expect something to be done to rebuild the homes and the overall neighbourhood that would significantly reduce the long-term risk,” he said.

California building codes indeed require homes to be “hardened” from fires. The houses that will be rebuilt in Los Angeles will contain sprinkler systems and use fire-resistant materials like tempered glass, which were lacking in many of the city’s older homes that were destroyed.

As a result, Boomhower said he believed it was far more urgent for governments in flood-prone areas, like Florida and Louisiana, to rethink homebuilding efforts.

“There are properties that flood over and over. There’s a lot of interest in figuring out how to abandon those places because we know there is an incredibly high probability that they will suffer these losses again and again,” he said. “A place like the Palisades has a really high wildfire risk, but what that means is that sometime in the next 30 years another fire will come through there. It’s a very different risk.”

Article written by Samantha Delouya