Ahead of the one-year anniversary of the deadly fire in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles, there are conflicting reports on who’s buying up some of the burned-out lots. Redfin, a real estate brokerage company, released a report that investors are buying 40% of the lots being sold.
Pali Builds, a site tracking the rebuild of the area, said that’s just not true.
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The wildfire killed 12 people and burned more than 6,000 structures. A suspect alleged to have started the fire could face the death penalty.
Redfin report
A report from Redfin claims that 48 of the 119 lots sold in the Palisades have been bought by investors. The report also said many of those who lost their homes in the fires have purchased homes elsewhere.
“A lot of people whose homes burned in the Palisades purchased houses in Santa Monica, Santa Barbara, Manhattan Beach, Orange County and San Diego,” Justin Vold, a Redfin real estate agent, said. “In the spring, we saw prices in the North of Montana neighborhood of Santa Monica jump 10% and bidding wars on $11 million homes.”
Vold said one of his clients bought a nearly $4 million home nearby in Santa Monica but does plan to rebuild in the Palisades.
Redfin said these numbers are based on analysis of investor lot purchases in county records through the third quarter of 2025.
They also said it’s commonplace for sales to pick up in areas hit by natural disasters.
According to Redfin, nearly 500 listings of vacant lots and homes remain for sale in the Palisades.
Pali Builds dispute
Pali Builds was created after the fire by Kambiz Kamdar, a local resident and general contractor in the area. The site tracks sales and permit data — and made it very clear in a recent newsletter what they think of the Redfin data.
“They are wrong,” the newsletter reads.
Redfin defines an investor as a buyer whose name includes one of the following key words:
- LLC
- Inc
- Corp
- Homes
They also define an investor as any buyer whose ownership code on a purchasing deed includes at least one of the following keywords:
- Association
- Corporate trustee
- Company
- Joint venture
- Corporate trust
Redfin said they do not count purchases made through family trusts.
“People are going to put a property in an LLC, in a trust — that could just be a homeowner — for various tax purposes,” Kamdar, who is also a member of the Palisades Builders Coalition, told SAN. “They could buy a property in another entity that’s not their personal name. So, we’re actually disputing the fact that there’s 40% sold to developers. I think that number is closer to 20%.”
That 20% number is based on the raw data that Pali Builds has collected and published on their website.
“We’re actually tracking a lot of Palisadians themselves, whether they’re upgrading in terms of the location within the Palisades,” Kamdar said. “You actually have a decent amount that are buying the lots next to them or adjacent to them to add onto their yard space. So, I actually discount their number by half.”
Is this good or bad?
About one week after the fire began, Gov. Gavin Newsom issued an executive order to protect people in the Palisades and other burn areas from what he called “predatory investors.”
“As families mourn, the last thing they need is greedy speculators taking advantage of their pain,” Newsom said at the time. “I have heard first-hand from community members and victims who have received unsolicited and predatory offers from speculators offering cash far below market value — some while their homes were burning.”
While Kamdar didn’t agree with Redfin’s number, he also doesn’t believe investors are necessarily a bad thing.
“As a developer and contractor myself, I’m okay with developers coming and buying properties,” Kamdar said. “Because if I’m a developer, I’m going to buy that property and actually develop it and build it and sell it to a family that wants to live there.”
He said it’s better than having a bunch of empty lots in the area.
“They’re going to actually build a structure for another family to live in, not just have a vacant piece of dirt there for however many years,” Kamdar said.
