One year after California’s Palisades fires, homeowners face a rebuild

Longtime Pacific Palisades residents Janna Kohl and her husband say they consider themselves lucky. 

“What really breaks my heart is people like our next-door neighbor. They were in their late 70s, early 80s. They’d lived in their house for 60 years. It was their original house, and they were pillars of the community. And people like that aren’t coming back,” Kohl told Fox News Digital.

January 7 marks the one-year anniversary of the start of the deadly Los Angeles wildfires — the Palisades and Eaton fires. Though the fires were contained by the end of the month, the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corporation reports that they caused up to $53.8 billion in property damage alone.

The department’s research also found extraordinarily high destruction rates, with the Palisades Fire destroying 56.3% of all assessed structures and 55.8% of single-family homes. The Eaton Fire destroyed about 50% of all structures and single-family homes.

PALISADES FIRE ARREST: THE FINANCIAL COST OF ONE OF L.A.’s MOST DEVASTATING BLAZES

But the fires didn’t just destroy homes — they forced families into a yearlong decision cycle shaped by insurance, infrastructure and time.

An aerial view shows empty lots and new homes under construction in Pacific Palisades, California on January 5, 2026. (Getty Images)

“All of a sudden there was just this numbness that I’m not going back to that house ever. But you can’t really dwell on that because, at that time, you had to mobilize,” Kohl said. “Everybody was snatching up every rental you could possibly get. There weren’t even hotel rooms. The rest of the city was still burning. And you just had to think, oh my gosh, where are we going to go and how’s this going to sort out?”

“I think when these fires happened, like I said, I’ve been in the business over 25 years, I would say this is the most emotionally trying year as a broker I’ve had and as [has] my team,” Douglas Elliman’s Cory Weiss – and Kohl’s real estate agent – also told Fox Digital.

“You had people come to you in shock. And I think once you saw the shock wear off, then there was anger, and then they were really trying to figure out where their lives are gonna go.”

According to Kohl and Weiss, about 25% to 30% of residents will rebuild, while most will walk away; and the deciding factor is often not desire, but rather the math around insurance disputes, labor shortages, permitting delays and rebuilding costs.

“I don’t think anyone knows what their insurance cost is going to be. I think everybody’s like, ‘I got to figure this out, I just got to get my house built, and I’ll just cross that bridge…