Many people were displaced during last year’s devastating wildfires across Los Angeles County, but getting back home is proving to be a difficult task. New data reveals how real estate investors are changing the housing market in areas destroyed by the Palisades and Eaton fires.
The ABC News Data Team analyzed the latest figures from the Los Angeles County Assessor’s Office and found that home values have steadily dropped in the two fire-ravaged communities.
Since the 2025 wildfires, the average home sale price in what would become the Palisades Fire burn scar was around $3.6 million. By October, it had dropped to $2.4 million — a 33 percent decrease. In the Eaton Fire zone, the average home sale went from $1.8 million to approximately $684,000, marking a 62 percent drop.
Before the wildfires, home values had been increasing in both areas. However, as values decreased in the Palisades and Eaton fire zones, mortgage foreclosures began to rise in the first nine months after the fires.
From January through September, there were at least 121 mortgage foreclosures in the Eaton Fire burn scar and 91 foreclosures recorded in the Palisades Fire area. These totals pushed the foreclosure rate to 2.15 per 1,000 housing units in the Eaton Fire area and 3.66 per 1,000 housing units in the Palisades Fire area — the highest rates for these communities over the past three years.
Despite movements claiming to “Protect the Palisades” and protests proclaiming “Altadena Is Not For Sale,” some owners of now-vacant lots have had to move on.
The ABC News Data Team also discovered that 44 percent of homes sold in both burn scar areas were purchased by corporate entities. This percentage is about twice the national average of corporate homeowners, most of whom are small “mom-and-pop” investors.
In the Eaton Fire burn scar, eight companies are behind 40 percent of the homes bought by corporate entities. In the Palisades Fire burn scar, 14 companies purchased 22.6 percent of homes bought by corporate entities. These trends are raising concerns about potential monopolies developing in these areas.
https://abc7.com/post/home-values-are-dropping-corporations-moving-palisades-eaton-fire-burn-scars-data-shows/18339634/
