What It Really Takes To Rebuild After a Disaster: Lessons From L.A.’s Recovery

A year after the devastating Los Angeles wildfires that erased $8.3 billion in home value across Pacific Palisades and Altadena, most of the affected homeowners are still trying to rebuild. 

Survivors have faced a slew of delays from stalled insurance payouts, permitting hurdles, and what many describe as a sluggish response from the city of Los Angeles.

Claire O’Connor, a local real estate agent who lost her home in the Palisades fire and whom Realtor.com® first spoke with in May 2025, put it plainly: “Not a lot has changed since then.”

When we first spoke with her, she had just received her initial insurance payout and was trying to plan next steps. One year later, she’s still trying to rebuild and still waiting.

‘Nobody I know is fully made whole’

After a total loss, insurance payouts don’t usually arrive as one clean check. They come in stages: initial funds to cover additional living expenses, payments routed through a mortgage lender to ensure rebuilding, and then smaller tranches that can take months to resolve.

For O’Connor,  that final stretch has been the hardest. “It's that last 25%,” she says, for which insurance companies are “digging in their heels.”

The result, she added, is that the claims process becomes “more or less a full-time job to follow up.” And even when a home is clearly gone, she says the burden still falls on policyholders to prove every detail. “There's no assumption that, like, yes, it was a total loss. So, yes, you get full coverage.”

Then there’s the churn—new adjusters, new requests, and long gaps between updates. This is where, she says, it can get particularly frustrating: “You're not getting called back, or you're not getting responses.”

The pattern isn’t unique to her. “There's nobody I know that's just like fully made whole from their insurance at this point,” O’Connor says, an impasse that, for many families, effectively pauses the rebuild itself.

“People who need the money are still waiting [to rebuild],” she says. “All the people that are relying solely on insurance are moving at a much slower pace.” Even those who want to rebuild, like O'Connor, can’t move forward without clarity. “Without knowing what the total amount is, we can't really fully commit to what we're going to rebuild.”

When asked what advice she’d give to others to help avoid the same insurance struggles, O’Connor pointed to one simple step: documentation.

“I would take a video of my whole house maybe annually,” she says. “That's such an easy activity to do, and I think it's very helpful.” She added that some neighbors who had done so found it helpful when filing claims.

It’s a tip that’s also backed by FEMA. A video recording is a quick way to create an inventory of your belongings, which can help your insurer determine your payout. For unique or expensive items—for heirloom jewelry, for example—it can be helpful to have an official appraisal on record, too.

‘Simple’ only if you rebuild the exact same house

In the weeks after the fires, local and state officials made a sweeping promise: The rebuilding process would be fast-tracked. Under emergency orders from Gov. Gavin Newsom and Mayor Karen Bass, homeowners were told they could rebuild up to 110% of their original home, with permits approved in as little as 30 days. New rules allowed self-certification of simple plans, and some architects reported getting approvals in three days instead of three months.

But those promises came with fine print. The streamlined path applied only to like-for-like rebuilds—homes rebuilt to nearly identical specifications.

“It feels like what was supposed to be really simple actually only meant if you want the exact same house,” says O’Connor.

Any attempt to make changes—like adding an accessory dwelling unit, upgrading to new energy codes, or even slightly altering the footprint—can trigger delays, additional reviews, or full resubmittals. “Any variation from that is a lot more time in the city,” she adds.

That’s part of the reason why, nine months after the wildfire, more than 70% of households that lost their homes remained displaced, according to an October survey conducted by the Department of Angels, a local fire recovery group. And while more than 2,600 rebuilding permits have been issued as of this week, and 417 projects have begun construction, only two homes have been rebuilt—including one by a developer, Thomas James Homes, as a "showcase home.”

For many survivors, that statistic reflects deep institutional failure.

“The misses by the city are huge,” says O’Connor. “And it feels like there's not a lot of acknowledgement of that.”

O’Connor first points to the lack of urgency and accountability in the city’s response to the fire itself. “There should have been a bigger consequence … people losing their lives like this was a huge deal,” she says.

For her, one memory in particular still haunts her: “Being stuck in traffic and not hearing a single siren haunts me.”

Then there's other low-hanging fruit left untouched by the city, like sales tax on lumber to rebuild. "Why should we be paying California sales tax when California let the houses burn down?" O'Connor asks.

She also points to the ULA tax—a 4% to 5.5% levy on the transfer of any home worth $5.3 million or more. "If I rebuild and if I reinvest my money into the community, I don't think that I should have to pay that tax."

‘I really liked that version of my life’

But for O’Connor, the long road to rebuilding has been as much about grieving a life that vanished in an instant.

“I often think about a version of my life where our house didn't burn down,” she says. “I really liked that version of my life living in the Palisades.”

A year later, she says the loss doesn’t fade in a straight line. It keeps resurfacing—sometimes in the most ordinary moments. “There’s these like seasonal reminders of it,” she says. “You don't think about Christmas decorations when you're just trying to, like, find shelter in January.” The timeline itself can feel warped. “It feels like a whole lifetime ago. But also so recent.”

And even as insurance and construction move forward, albeit slowly, she says it’s important to remember what they can’t restore. “Like the stuff that actually matters … insurance doesn't cover that.”

That’s why her advice, now, is both practical and personal. If you ever find yourself forced into the rebuilding process—whether from fire, flood, or another disaster—she says to resist the pressure to follow anyone else’s timeline. “Honor your own … stand firm in what is right for you and your family.”

For the people trying to help, she offers one more straightforward lesson: Keep it simple, and reduce the burden. “I would definitely give gift cards over stuff,” she says.