Real Estate, Updates, News & Tips

Eighteen active wildfires spreading throughout California have scorched an area larger than the entire city of Los Angeles, officials said Wednesday. Communities spanning from Redding in Northern California to Riverside County in Southern California are all under threat. The impact on the housing market, however, could be mixed. Realtor.com® notes that property values will most likely plummet in some areas and may take years to recover. But in some parts, housing prices may surge after the wildfires. The Carr Fire, which is the largest of the current blazes, has killed six people and destroyed 1,018 homes and 12 commercial buildings. Another 181 people have been injured, and an additional six commercial structures have been damaged. More than 2,500 homes are under threat. As of Wednesday, the Carr Fire was 35 percent contained, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (also known as Cal Fire) announced Wednesday. The Carr Fire first broke out in Redding, about 160 miles north of Sacramento. “You’ve got all these families who will need to find a place to live,” says Orell Anderson, a real estate appraiser at Strategic Property Analytics in Laguna Beach, Calif. “There won’t be any vacancies.” Prices could rise about 10 to 25 percent in Redding, some real estate appraisers predict. On the other hand, homes that were spared in areas that are seeing a lot of devastation will likely see prices decrease by 25 to 50 percent, Anderson told realtor.com®. Erin Richart is a local real estate professional in Redding, and her home was recently spared as the fires closed in. She says she has already started seeing home prices rise: A homebuilder raised the price of his new-construction homes by $10,000, and a rental house that had been previously listed at $2,500 a month has increased to $3,200 since the fires broke out. “We’re seeing some things like that that people are in an outrage over,” says Richart, who works at Properties by Merit. Richart also notes that many homes are being removed from the market. “We’ve seen a lot of listings withdrawn or canceled either because they burned down or because they’re going to be [repurposed] for rentals instead,” she says. “A lot of people are renting to family or friends.” Anderson says that after a housing market has been affected by a natural disaster it generally takes a minimum of two years to get back to normal. California has faced a series of destructive fires over the past few years. In 2017, 46 people died in wildfires in the state, and nearly 12,000 homes and buildings were destroyed, according to Cal Fire.