'Sold Out': LA's Westside Apartment Market Fills To The Brim After Fires

A month after devastating fires swept through swaths of Los Angeles and its surrounding cities, local multifamily owners are experiencing bumps in their portfolios’ occupancy rates as residents displaced by fire look for shelter.

With dozens of apartment buildings and thousands of single-family homes impacted by the Palisades and Eaton fires, a flood of people searching for immediate housing hit the market in the second week of January, further crunching LA’s already tight apartment market.

“We're basically sold out at this point,” said Daniel Negari, CEO of XYZ Rent, which owns about 30 smaller apartment buildings in Santa Monica with several hundred units in all.

LA multifamily occupancy was 95.2% in the fourth quarter of 2024, and Westside overall was 94.2%, according to a report from Colliers. Post-fire vacancy data is not yet available.

XYZ Rent filled about a dozen units within the first week after the outbreak of the fires. Many of the new occupants are people Negari knows closely: The chief financial officer of his company lost their house in the fire and is now living in one of the company’s previously vacant units. 

“I looked at any and all of our available units, all any and all of our units that were under construction, or being turned over that were coming [online],” Negari said. “We just did what we could.”

Negari said that while many of these units were not technically vacant — they were units that were in the process of being put on the market or that just completed renovations — the company’s already low vacancy is now nonexistent. 

The rush was on the week of Jan. 12 after the fires erupted, with views of rental listings doubling, according to Redfin data.

Across its LA portfolio, Moss & Co. President Chris Gray estimates that renters fleeing the Palisades fires boosted occupancy a full percentage point. Among just the West LA properties, occupancy was probably boosted 2% or 3% because of these renters, Gray said. 

In West LA, “every two-bedroom with a washer and dryer in-unit, which are the newer constructed properties, was pretty much spoken for,” Gray said. “We filled up within seven days of the fire.” 

The crush to find temporary housing close to where displaced residents lived had property managers working overtime, seven days a week, Gray said. Because many people who left did so in a hurry and could not return home, his staff often had to spend time on uncommon tasks like trying to help new tenants find rental furnishings on short notice. 

The firm manages more than 14,000 units across Southern California, according to its website, but the most intense demand Gray saw was for units in Westside neighborhoods, including Marina del Rey and Santa Monica, and especially for two-bedroom units with in-unit laundry. 

Gray estimated he signed about 47 leases in the first week following the fires alone.

Despite the surge in renters, it doesn’t appear that the rush has translated citywide into any major rental rate gains, likely because vacancies were already less than 5% and reputable landlords are trying to accommodate difficult financial situations for new renters.

For the month of January, median rent growth was still down month-over-month and year-over-year by 0.2% and 0.6%, respectively, according to ApartmentList.com

Among the special offers that Moss & Co. made for fire-displaced renters were flexible lease terms, including three months, six months or the standard 12 months without charging a premium. But only about 20% of new renters took advantage of the shorter terms, electing to sign on for full yearlong terms, Gray said. 

At Park LaBrea, Vice President of Property Management Aryn Thomez said that the owner of the 4,500-unit complex, Prime Group, signed people to 12-month leases but with a waiver of lease termination fees so that if the lease needs to end before one year is up, there’s no penalty. This extended to fire evacuees looking to move in anywhere across Prime’s Southern California portfolio, Thomez said. 

It remains to be seen how long these new renters will stay in their new temporary homes. 

“The big question is the time it takes to rebuild, and that story is different for everyone, whether they lost a home or you have smoke damage like so much of the area,” Gray said. “But I would imagine that we'll see the effects of this for the next 12 to 24 months.”