A year after wildfires devastated parts of Los Angeles, the true cost of the destruction can now be revealed as recovery lags.
The Palisades and Eaton fires of January 2025 caused property values to plummet, with many parts of the city that were affected still struggling to recover and the majority of residents continuing to live in temporary housing.
A new housing data analysis conducted by Realtor.com® researchers reveals that the total value of destroyed homes in the fire zones of the celebrity-studded Pacific Palisades enclave and working-class Altadena fell from $14.7 billion to $10.8 billion and from $7 billion to $4.7 billion, respectively, between late 2024 and the second half of 2025.
Homes damaged by the fires but not completely ravaged saw their total value decline from $2.2 billion to $1.9 billion in Pacific Palisades and from $825 million to $658 million in Altadena.
Even properties that were not physically affected but merely located in the hardest-hit burn zones experienced significant losses, with aggregate values falling from $10.4 billion to $9.4 billion in Pacific Palisades and from $3.8 billion to $3.2 billion in Altadena.
Altogether, the fires erased an estimated $8.3 billion in home value across the two scorched suburban L.A. communities. Notably, that total does not take into account losses in other affected enclaves, such as Malibu and Topanga.
Analysts used the average of the latest available automated valuation model home values from real estate analytics firms Cotality and Quantarium.
Looking at homes purchased between 2020 and 2024 that were reduced to ash and later sold as vacant lots in 2025, sale prices were typically about 50% lower than their most recent pre-fire purchase prices in both Pacific Palisades (-51.6%) and Altadena (-51.3%), reflecting the loss of livable structures as well as the cost and uncertainty of rebuilding.
The analysis includes only properties assessed by the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CAL FIRE) and captured in its damage assessment data. It’s important to note that a substantial number of properties are not represented in the CAL FIRE data and therefore are not reflected in these figures.
“Taken together, the sales and valuation data indicate that the fires led to large, immediate losses in housing wealth for destroyed properties, alongside more moderate but widespread value softening across surrounding neighborhoods,” says Realtor.com senior economic research analyst Hannah Jones.