Rental listing sites in the Los Angeles County area are struggling to cope with reduced rents amid the devastating and deadly wildfires. ruining the region and displacing thousands of residents.
Real estate marketplace Zillow told ABC News it has “removed hundreds of Zillow listings due to price increases that exceed the emergency status threshold.”
Housing providers can fix “pricing issues” and relist homes or apartments once they are corrected, the company said.
An entire area damaged by the Palisades Fire is seen in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, on January 15, 2025.
Etienne Laurent/AFP via Getty Images
The Los Angeles County Department of Consumer and Business Affairs (DCBA) warned businesses that they may not have prices during a declared emergency. Prices of goods and services — including hotel rooms, rental housing and emergency supplies — cannot increase by more than 10% during an emergency.
Some residents have seen increases in prices or rooms they rent or the houses they rent have gone up by 100%, 200% or even 300%, according to LA County District Attorney Nathan Hochman.
“If you’re one of those people who has been involved in price gouging, if you don’t have to stop it immediately, I strongly encourage you to go back and fix it, go back and refund the amount you overcharged people,” Hochman said at a Jan. 15 news conference. “We will certainly take that into consideration in deciding whether or not to charge.”
Hochman noted that violators will face criminal and civil penalties.
“And just as importantly, your name will get out, your company’s name will get out,” he said. “You’re going to be publicly embarrassed. I want to make that crystal clear. So stop right now.”
Failure to comply with price-gouging laws can result in fines of up to $10,000 or up to a year in jail, or both, according to the DCBA.
In a statement, DCBA director Rafael Carbajal said his office “stands ready to investigate reports of price gouging and hold violators accountable.”
That’s as Los Angeles County continues to grapple with the housing crisis and its residents prepare to feel the sting of the annual rent increase approved on February 1st.
“We know that rents in the city were already going up, and the 75,000 homeless people in the county, before the fires, show how impossible it is to keep a roof over your head in L.A.,” Paul Lanctot of the L.A. Tenants Union told ABC. the news “With so many homes destroyed, more people looking for fewer apartments, we know rents are going to go up.”
Co Star Group, which owns Homes.com and Apartments.com, told ABC News it is actively assessing the impact of the fires on the local market.
The real estate market network reported that local hotel occupancy increased by 13.9 percent year-on-year.
He also told ABC News that he has implemented measures to actively monitor the behavior of landlords.
Those measures include: “Eliminating listing fees and application fees for IO listings in SoCal; reviewing and removing any listings that show obvious price gouging; manually reviewing, as well as adjusting automated tools, all listings added to Apartments.com. search price gouging and listing fraud” and more.
A person walks through the destruction left by the Palisades fire in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles on January 9, 2025.
Jae C. Hong/AP
On January 15, real estate app Redfin told ABC News in a statement that it had not removed any listings of illegal price hikes that exceeded the state of emergency threshold at the time.
“That may change in the coming days/weeks,” the statement said.
Airbnb said in an online statement that any host trying to raise prices on its services by more than 10% will receive an error message.
Residents also take it upon themselves to control the rise in prices.
Chelsea Kirk, director of policy and advocacy for a local tenant rights organization, is tracking rent increases through a public spreadsheet and working with dozens of volunteers to report potential cases to 311.
“I’ve been working in defense for about eight years,” Kirk told ABC News. “A few days after the fires, when it kind of became clear what the level of devastation was, you know, the number of people displaced, the number of homes lost — one of my first thoughts was that the rent was going to go up and I bet it already is.”
An analysis of data obtained by ABC News shows nearly 400 listings with prices that appear to have increased after the fires.
The average cost of renting a single family home in Los Angeles is around $5,500 per month. However, since the evacuations began, some residents are willing to pay even more — sometimes double — to outdo others and get a roof over their heads.
Erica Lee, a neighbor who lost her home in the fire and has been bouncing between Airbnbs with her family, says she’s lost in at least five listings.
“They say they’re already taken,” he told ABC News. “Or the one who changed our rent at the last minute. We couldn’t afford it anymore.”
The uncertainty is running through Lee’s family, including his 7-year-old son.
“It’s hard because my son keeps asking me, ‘When are we going to stop moving?’ And I don’t have an answer,” he said.
