The Pacific Palisades is home to the rich and famous. Now they’re being forced to flee.
The area, known for scenery and ocean views, hadn’t been subjected to wildfires in recent decades.
Real-estate developer and film producer Anita Verma-Lallian bought late “Friends” actor Matthew Perry’s home in Los Angeles’ Pacific Palisades area for $8.55 million last year.
Now, she isn’t sure if it is still standing.
The property is one of many ultraluxury homes in the path of the ferocious wildfires that have devastated Los Angeles over the past day. Verma-Lallian watched over her security cameras as flames started to engulf the area on Tuesday afternoon and as at least one of her neighbour’s homes caught fire. At 3:30pm. Pacific time, the feed from the cameras cut out.
“We’re hopeful, still,” said Verma-Lallian. “No one knows what happened throughout the night … but I’m still maintaining hope that everything’s OK.” The Pacific Palisades neighbourhood has long been home to some of L.A.’s wealthiest residents. They worried Wednesday about whether their homes would survive. The Palisades Fire had spread to almost 12,000 acres as of midday Wednesday and destroyed 1,000 structures. Tens of thousands of residents were under evacuation orders.
Other fires in the L.A. area also forced residents to evacuate. Pacific Palisades is known for its scenery, boasting views of the ocean and the Santa Monica Mountains. It is a quiet, secluded atmosphere. The neighbourhood sits between state parks and the ocean, offering residents easy access to hiking and the beach.
While it is populated with high-end homes and gated communities, there is also a small, walkable downtown with boutiques and cafes. Celebrities who have purchased homes in the area include Reese Witherspoon, Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner and Steven Spielberg.
Wildfires haven’t been recorded in Pacific Palisades in recent decades, but 96% of properties in the neighbourhood face wildfire risk over the next 30 years, according to research firm First Street.
“Those areas have a tremendous amount of risk” because the neighbourhood is surrounded by parks, said Jeremy Porter, First Street’s head of climate implications. “They have a lot of fuel, and a lot of that fuel is dry.” Kurt Rappaport, a Los Angeles real-estate investor and luxury broker, said he is unsure of the status of two homes he owns in neighbouring Brentwood and a home he recently purchased for $22.5 million in Malibu. He and his family are under evacuation orders. They have been watching the news, but since the security cameras are down at their homes, they have no direct knowledge of whether their properties are still standing.
“There’s an entire cloud over the city,” Rappaport said. “It looks like Armageddon.”
Rappaport said his family took whatever they could fit in the car — birth certificates, passports and small valuable items like jewellery.
The typical home value in Pacific Palisades is $3.4 million. Sixteen homes on the market are priced at $10 million or more in Pacific Palisades, according to Zillow. In neighbouring Brentwood, 18 properties meet that threshold.
The most expensive in the Palisades is a contemporary estate asking $59.95 million. An Italian villa-style estate on the market for $36.995 million is the longtime home of boxing legend Sugar Ray Leonard and his wife Bern Leonard. In Brentwood, an estate built for Milwaukee Brewers minority owner Robert Beyer is listed for $64.5 million. Beyer said that, for now, his home is safe and outside the evacuation zone.
Leighton Meester and Adam Brody’s house has burned down amid the Pacific Palisades wildfire. pic.twitter.com/ZtG6haO4Tl
— 21 (@21metgala) January 8, 2025
Pacific Palisades’ typical home value is down 4.9% year-over-year, according to Zillow. The high-end Los Angeles housing market has slowed in recent years due to elevated mortgage rates, rising home-insurance costs and new taxes on luxury home sales. For many California homeowners, obtaining home insurance at all has become a challenge.
In the near term, the wildfires are likely to slow home sales in the affected areas but could lead to higher sales in nearby neighbourhoods that didn’t burn, said Oscar Wei, deputy chief economist for the California Association of Realtors.
Petra Ecclestone, the daughter of former Formula One boss Bernie Ecclestone, and her husband, Sam Palmer, were among those evacuated from their properties. They paid $30.5 million for an estate on Brentwood’s toney Rockingham Road in 2023. Sitting on about half an acre, the newly built brick home measures approximately 13,000 square feet with seven bedrooms, a movie theatre, a music room and a roughly 200-bottle wine cellar.
Palmer said he and Ecclestone are watching on television from a room at the Beverly Hills Hotel and praying for a miracle as the fires move toward their house. The hotel, he said, is fully booked with people fleeing the fires, so the whole family is holed up in one room.
“It’s standing at this minute. Who knows later in the day?” he said of the house.
Ecclestone got stuck in bottleneck traffic when picking the children up from school in the Palisades on Tuesday, Palmer said. She ultimately abandoned the car and walked by foot to Will Rogers State Beach, where Palmer was able to pick them up.
Garret Gray, president of global insurance solutions for real-estate data company CoreLogic, evacuated from Pacific Palisades with his three children Tuesday.
“It was total gridlock,” he said. “Our whole street was just engulfed in flames.” Even homes in the area that don’t burn are likely to suffer from smoke damage or flooding from sprinkler systems, he said.
“The whole area is going to be dealing with the aftermath,” he said.
The Wall Street Journal
