Corporate Buyers are Quietly Purchasing in Altadena at Alarming Rates
The famous or infamous quote, “when there’s blood on the streets, buy property,” bastardized from the original quote believed to be, "Buy when there's blood in the streets, even if the blood is your own," is seemingly what is happening in Altadena post the horrific fires that destroyed homes and lives.
In January this year, the Eaton Fire destroyed over 6,000 homes in Los Angeles’s Altadena neighborhood. And since the fire, nearly “150 damaged properties have been sold in this close-knit foothill community just northeast of Los Angeles, known for its mix of cottages, mid-century bungalows, and multigenerational households,” according to Dwell.
It has been reported that at least 50 percent of post-fire home sales were made by corporate entities. This rate greatly outpaces the national average, where corporate buyers make up about 23 percent of single-family home sales.
Further, 42 percent of those sales are now held by just six companies, each of which has acquired four or more homes. “While this sample size is limited, the concentration of ownership points to a pattern of land consolidation that warrants attention—particularly in a community still recovering from disaster. The paper trail leads to a small group of repeat buyers,” reports Dwell.
Tim Vordtriede, an architect who lost his home in the Eaton Fire cofounded the Altadena Collective, a grassroots community-led organization focused on rebuilding. He talked about the unease he feels regarding the speed and size of investors buying into the community, he’s "very concerned—but also in that same way we’re feeling about the rest of the world: concerned, but don’t know how to fix it."
According to Dwell, a spokesperson for Black Lion said in a statement that the brothers "love and care about the Altadena community and saw an opportunity to invest in it. Many people who were affected by the fires in Altadena cannot or do not want to rebuild and aspire to move on and start over elsewhere. These purchases will help some of them while keeping ownership of the property local."
