An Unexpected Opportunity. 🙏🏻

Brock's newsletter | FEBRUARY 13TH, 2026

An Unexpected Opportunity Arises.

We often see pictures in the news of Altadena as a burn zone – devastating photos of families standing on their plots and dirt lots for miles. But if you drive up to Altadena now, what you see is construction…everywhere.

The greenery has returned and the community is hard at work rebuilding. Some of the building is by residents who lost their homes, some by developers.

But as any fire victim can tell you, rebuilding is not for everyone.

Many Altadenans can't rebuild, or don’t want to, for myriad reasons. They have small kids, they’re seniors, they’re landlords. Some had architects draw extensive plans only to have a contractor bid out the work to the tune of $1-2 million over the expected budget. And, many don’t want to spend 1-4 years rebuilding a house, and just need to move on.

So, they sold their lots – 500 have changed hands in the last year.

Who bought the lots? You guessed it. Professional home builders (for the most part). They bought the lots with the intention of building homes and selling them. At a profit.

The profit part irks a lot of people. But it's looking like there might not be any profit at all, at least not right away.

One Man's Loss, Another Man's Gain

See, the first round of rebuilt homes are slowly trickling into the market, and there's some bad news for the builders, but good news for prospective buyers.

A lot of these houses are going to sell for way less than it cost to build them.

The first round of Altadena homebuyers might be getting a home for $1.8mil that cost the builder $2.2mil to build. Why? Because as the builders are building, like homeowners, they're seeing the rising costs of construction and red tape increase their projected budget from $500/ft to $650-700/ft.

Building is expensive. And the Altadena market can only support certain sales prices at the nascent stages of rebuilding. So these builders, at least at first, will be losing money on these projects.

The Whole Area Getting a Glow-up

The opportunity here is getting a brand new house, that is move-in ready, and won't need a nickel in updates or replacements, all to current codes, and likely with robust fireproofing, for less than it cost to build.

And the whole neighborhood is getting upgraded. For example, most power lines in the city are getting buried underground. And new parks are being built, including one by Disney Imagineers, which will be great for families.

Yes, there are still questions. Soil toxicity. Vacant lots that stay vacant. Construction noise and trucks. And prices on all these homes are still TBD.

But for Altadenans in the midst of rebuilding, seeing looming construction costs and timelines, this may be the path of least resistance.

And I think homebuyers shopping in NELA should include Altadena in their home search.

Not All Are Created Equal

Remember, the 1961 Bel Air fire destroyed 484 homes in the surrounding area. However, the iconic Trousdale Estates came out of that fire, with modern, single-story homes designed by architects like Wallace Neff and Richard Dorman that now form the luxury Beverly Hills community.

Following the fire, new building standards were implemented, including the banning of wood shake roofs.

Driving around Altadena, there are homes with charm popping up. Programs like Case Study Adapt and Foothill Catalog are providing Altadena-inspired plans to inspire the rebuilding of architecturally desirable homes for the community. And many of the builders there are building like-for-like homes – i.e., taking the original plans and rebuilding what was already there.

Annoyingly, some builder-grade Home Cheapo specials are going up for sale. I hope it’s not too many. But that's on the community to give feedback: our money is our voice, and when the builder sees that homes with grey flooring and vinyl windows aren't selling, the hope is that they will pivot. They are there to make money by selling what the community demands.

The good news is, regardless of style, every single one, from the most affordable to the most expensive, will be new construction meeting current safety and building standards.

Picking Up Where We Left Off

Altadena is an amazing community, and it will continue to be (see video of Lori & I talking about where we would move if we had a $2 million budget from 2023). And at this point in its regrowth (the early stage), you can buy new homes at a discount.

Remember, Altadena was trending hard before the fires. Prices had doubled in previous the five years.

Renters from Echo Park and Silver Lake, who used to buy in Highland Park before prices there doubled, were going a little further to find some of the most charming and affordable housing stock in the area.