Palisades Broker Describes “Wave of Emotions” From LA Fires

Amalfi Estates founder Anthony Marguleas and his family lost their Pacific Palisades home last week in the fire. His boutique brokerage’s office in the Palisades — left with significant smoke damage and blown out windows — is not safe for work.

“It’s a wave of emotions,” Marguleas said. “We lost our home. All of our friends lost their homes. The school our kids went to is gone. The whole sense of community. It’s one of those things if it was just your house, that’d be hard, but then you look at all the memories that you and your family had, every single support structure.”

After 33 years in the Palisades, Marguleas estimated he has likely been in 2,000 of the homes that were destroyed. He previously sold about 500 of them.

The broker estimated the number of homes that have been damaged or destroyed are likely underestimated; he guessed the number may be close to 6,000 or 7,000 across roughly a dozen neighborhoods. The Alphabet Streets alone — called after the alphabetical order in which the street names are ordered — experienced more than 1,200 homes damaged.

As an agent, Marguleas must tend not only to his personal situation but helping hundreds of clients impacted by the fires, all amid the noise of media and pundit chatter offering hot takes on rebuilding efforts, the state’s insurance crisis, price gouging and no shortage of people looking to take advantage of the situation.

Some of the latter begins with his own peers, looking to nab press.

“When I see so many Realtors on these TV shows spewing and communicating inaccurate information and they haven’t sold a home in the Palisades, it’s just infuriating to me,” he said.

Opportunists

The stories of what Marguleas has encountered over the past several days are becoming too many to count.

A few days ago he encountered a seller of a home in escrow who requested a clause that would funnel half the profit of a future sale if the buyer sold the home in the next 12 months. The seller contended it wasn’t fair if the buyer benefited financially from the fires. Earlier this week, Marguleas saw the police and paramedics come to a listing appointment after an agent’s assistant broke down from the weight of losing their home and family’s business to the Altadena Fire.

Marguleas also showed The Real Deal a text that came from one person looking to buy land. He reminded them that fires were still burning as cadaver dogs began their searches. The person apologized saying their boss and company had pressured them to reach out. The broker said dozens of similar texts are coming in daily to him and his team.

Marguleas estimated receiving 1,000 texts and 1,000 emails in a 72-hour stretch from people looking to buy land or sellers from Arizona, Nevada, New York, Arkansas and other states offering to sell homes to displaced clients.

“The day after the fires, myself and the team had dozens and dozens and dozens of calls from all the bottom dwellers, the scum of the earth,” Marguleas described. “My son who works with me said someone called and said, ‘Hey do you know any good deals in the Palisades?’ It’s horrific. Land values are going to drop substantially because prior to Jan. 8, there were maybe four or five teardowns in the Palisades. Now there’s 5,000. Imagine — there’s suddenly 50 years’ worth of teardowns on the market in a 24-hour window.”

Taking Action

Most of the effort by Marguleas and his team focus on the immediate challenges facing those impacted by the fires.

About a third of Amalfi Estates’ clients are renters. A small number of renters paid their landlords a year’s worth of rent upfront. With those homes burned, attempts to recoup that money have been unsuccessful with landlords claiming the money has been spent. There’s also the underinsurance issues for many renters whose coverage doesn’t begin to address what was lost.

For homeowners, Marguleas and his team are advising people to do a mortgage forbearance, which delays payments on mortgages for several months up to a year.

Landlords are inflating prices with multiple spreadsheets in circulation of properties that breach the state’s price gouging safeguard, which prohibits price increases of more than 10 percent in a time of emergency. Marguleas said many agents are canceling or marking the listings as expired in the MLS to conceal the original price and avoid prosecution.

The clamor to blame and interpret has also become deafening and redundant.

“Too many people are misguided and too many people are trying to do the blame game and recall [L.A. Mayor] Karen Bass,” Marguleas said. “What the hell is that going to do? We should be directing people to mental health clinics and directing people to rebuilding instead of directing negative energy into a recall. That’s ridiculous.”