Celebrity realtor: Landlords are ‘taking advantage’ of CA wildfires

Joining us now, I'm pleased to say Los Angeles Realtor and Oppenheim Group founder, Jason Oppenheim. Jason, thank you for your time today. We know that you've lived and breathed business in that area for years and years. What do you think of this executive order? From the calls that you've been fielding all day, how much of a problem was this? You know what? I'm so happy to hear about that. You're actually the person that just taught me about that executive order. I will tell you, five minutes before this interview, I had a call from someone that said, hey, I'd like to put offers in on some of the land along the beach. And I just basically hung up on him. We're already getting people trying to take advantage. We've had landlords trying to take advantage and now we're having buyers trying to take advantage. So I think it's the responsibility of real estate agents to make sure that we don't enable that. And I really appreciate whoever's executive order, whether that was the governor or the mayor. Jason, you brought up the fact that, so Taylor just mentioned that some people are trying to kind of get burned land on the cheap. But then you've got people who are displaced from their homes and some of them are wealthy, some of them are not. And the wealthy ones are willing to pay a premium to get a house that's actually standing right now, whether they're buying it or they're renting it. And the landlords and the sellers are demanding the same. So there's no sort of check and balance in that aspect of the market. I already know a few homes that have sold for two or three million dollars over asking as a result of that. Yeah, I haven't seen it much on the on the sales side. In fact, honestly, it's pretty hard to even. We've had all of our escrows on pause. Insurance providers are not providing insurance right now. And lenders are putting things on pause until they can check the situation, make sure the houses are still standing and they're not in any fire zone. I'm sorry. I make a clarification, Jason, not in fire damaged areas. I'm talking about in areas where the fire actually didn't hit. You can buy a house. Your kid can go to school tomorrow. There's a shopping center where you can get food in those areas. Apologies. Yeah, understood. What I'm seeing still, though, so far is not so much an increase in prices on sale. Ninety eight percent of the dozens of people that have reached out to me that have lost their homes out to Dina and the Palisades of Malibu are looking to lease property. What I am seeing, unfortunately, is, for example, I talked to Chad Lowe. He's an actor that lost his house in Palisades last night. You know, he's put in over 15 offers on properties and he has and he's been outbid on everyone. Now, I don't it's not legal for landlords to be taking more than than market value pre disaster. But a lot of these landlords are taking advantage of the opportunity. So, you know, rebuilding is one of the huge issues. You know this better than anybody as a real estate guy. Environmental laws in California are strict, especially in the areas that we're talking about here. Now, Governor Newsom has said he's going to suspend some of these laws, I guess, to help facilitate rebuilding. But, you know, in a state that's just notorious for red tape, how big of an issue is that going to be for some of the folks who lost their homes? I'm glad you brought it up. I issued a letter that was co-signed by 45 other top agents in the city that we directed to the governor and to the mayor. You know, to their credit, they did issue some executive orders that address some of the red tape and allow rebuilding of the same size home. But, you know, Los Angeles particularly has added more and more bureaucratic requirements on building to the point where developers basically are leaving the city in droves. So it's a huge concern. I actually think that we that we should focus on adding some additional layers of fire suppression. There are some things that we could do that could have prevented this air conditioning units were sucking in embers. We don't have screens and a lot of the air holes in the tops of roofs. But what we need to do, if we're going to be adding some requirements on builders, we need to remove many, many more of the requirements that are so costly, they're just unnecessary. And if we're lucky, what's your best case timeline for rebuilding? Well, the problem is this. So many of the people that lost their homes, you know, it's a 75 year old retired person. It's a 50 year old dentist that has no business managing a three year or four year construction project. So the fact is, we're going to need the help of developers and we're going to have to entice that. But I think best case, five years, realistic case, six to seven years. Shocking. Jason Oppenheim, we're grateful for your time and your expertise. Thank you for joining us today.