With the fires still blazing, it’s difficult to quantify the number of homes that may be affected. And for now, people are still grappling with loss and looking out for the safety of friends and neighbors. So far, more than 221,000 acres of land and 3,500 homes and other structures have been destroyed, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. At least 31 people have died.
Housing supply is short across the entire Bay Area. Displaced homeowners looking to relocate would find the most comparable home values to Sonoma County in Contra Costa County, to the east of San Francisco, Trulia’s McLaughlin said. Renters may have to travel as far as San Benito County, south of San Jose, based on comparable rents. Meanwhile, the onslaught of permit applications and heightened demands on construction labor will likely lengthen the rebuilding process.
Waiting Lists
Lawrance Florin, chief executive officer at Burbank Housing, Sonoma County’s largest operator of affordable housing, said that even before the fires, there were 15,000 people on his organization’s waiting list for low-income apartments. That number is likely to increase as the fires turn homeowners into renters, at least in the short term, putting further pressure on the rental market.
Florin said that 15 of his organization’s 63 properties had been evacuated, driving 1,500 residents into shelters. Fire consumed a structure across the street from one of Burbank’s buildings, but stopped short of the rental property.
In the long term, Florin said he hopes that the devastating fires will compel state and local politicians to reform regulations that restrict new construction and make building more time-consuming and expensive than it is in other states.
“There’s the possibility that as folks start to rebuild they do so with higher density and more units,” he said.
It’s a sentiment that may play well across the country. The U.S. real estate market isn’t adding enough new homes to meet normal demand, let alone react to a natural catastrophe, said Nela Richardson, chief economist at brokerage Redfin.
“The housing system can’t handle the shock,” she said. “Any event, even a big rainstorm that floods out several basements in a neighborhood, something as trivial as that can overwhelm the system.”
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.