Special Episode - California Wild Fires w/ Johny Pach

My good friend Johny Pach, Realtor in Beverly Hills, shares his first hand story of the fires he witnessed!  The devastating fires in Southern California have led to widespread destruction and a housing crisis, significantly impacting families, businesses, and community infrastructure. Listeners will gain insights into the personal stories of loss, the challenges of rental price surges, and the critical community responses to rebuild and recover from this catastrophe.

• Over 12,300 structures lost across various community sectors
• Personal accounts from families affected by the fires
• The role of community support in times of crisis
• Increased rental prices due to housing shortages
• Challenges faced with insurance and coverage
• The importance of keeping pets with their families during evacuations 
• Long-term impacts on the real estate market and economy 
• Understanding the shift in local dynamics and community resilience

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Welcome to The Brad Weisman Show, where we dive into the world of real estate, real life, and everything in between with your host, Brad Weisman! 🎙️ Join us for candid conversations, laughter, and a fresh take on the real world. Get ready to explore the ups and downs of life with a side of humor. From property to personality, we've got it all covered. Tune in, laugh along, and let's get real! 🏡🌟 #TheBradWeismanShow #RealEstateRealLife 

Credits - The music for my podcast was written and performed by Jeff Miller. 

Transcript

Speaker 1 0:31

All right, guys. No music, no fanfare, no, nothing. We're actually live here today. It's the Thursday and I wanted to get on here to talk to you a little bit about what's going on out in California with the fires. I have an agent and actually a friend now. Johnny Pash is his name. He was on the show once before. He works for Compass, or he's a real estate agent for Compass Realty out there in Beverly Hills, california, and I thought it'd be great to just touch base with him to find out, uh, what's going on, what does it look like on the streets there? What is happening with housing? Um, and what, what are people doing, you know, to just survive, because this is such a catastrophe, it's such a um, an anomaly and um. So I got Johnny on here. We are actually live. If you would have any questions, you can text me or call me. Most likely text me would be great, um, and we can answer the questions. But, johnny, how you doing bud?

Speaker 2 1:28

Um all right actually, yeah, not too bad at all Obviously deeply saddened by what's happened. Since last Tuesday, I've personally had around 52 clients that have lost their homes.

Speaker 1 1:44

Wait a minute 52 clients that have lost their homes.

Speaker 2 1:48

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 1:50

That's incredible.

Speaker 2 1:51

It's been some really difficult conversations, brad. Obviously these families are distraught and a lot of my clients are developers and if you think about the process here, they've purchased a great piece of land, let's say, just off of PCH in Malibu, overlooking the ocean. They have then waited probably two to three years to get their plans approved to build an incredible home on that coastline. It's then taken them another two years and they're just at the process now of where they want to sell the property and unfortunately, a few days ago completely burnt down and decimated. So every client has got different stories.

Speaker 2 2:39

I've had clients which are families who are dangerously close to the fires and nearly lost their lives and they're calling me up anxiously trying to get rehoused and into some sort of rental property or into some sort of hotel accommodation. And here's the thing, they've lost everything. So we are here at the Compass office and we're frantically trying to gather them linen and clothes and, you know, food and drink in some sort of cases. So it's, yeah, it's a really challenging time. It's been, um, it's been a bit of a stressful time but, um, there's such a great sense of community here in Los Angeles. Everybody's rallied together. The fire department has just been unbelievable. The fire department has just been unbelievable, the Red Cross has been unbelievable and, unfortunately, a lot of people are sleeping and housing themselves within the Red Cross volunteer unit, wow. So yeah, it's been a difficult time, but a real positive. You know a positive, a positive, optimistic, upbeat attitude from everybody here yeah, that that's incredible.

Speaker 1 3:59

You know, and this is the first time I'm actually talking to somebody that's there on the ground and and gone through, that is experiencing it. Um, you know, and I I feel for your clients, I feel for all of the people there. You know we're on the other side of of the country here and you know we see everything that other side of the country here and you know we see everything that we see through the media and, of course, you know stories and things like that and a lot of actors and producers and directors and. But there's also there's also a lot of I would think there's probably a lot of homes that are not just the $20 million homes or $10 million homes there's. I know I know your prices out there are a lot different than ours, but is there a lot of your average sale price homes that were destroyed also?

Speaker 2 4:40

Yeah, absolutely. I mean the Palisades area is one of the most desirable locations in Los Angeles to live. So those properties, I mean the medium sales price over there is probably about 1.5 to 2.5 million, but then you're talking 2.5 million all the way up to about 40 million over in that area. I mean, if you think about it, brad, I think it's something like 12,300 structures have been lost, and this is a mixture of single-family homes, multi-family and especially commercial, like mcdonald's chase bank, um, you know the grove type of situation.

Speaker 1 5:25

big shopping malls, they've all just been completely wiped off well and that's the part that blows my mind, johnny, is that I was just talking about this with with an agent here in our office. Is you know, your house burns down? In a normal situation, um, you're, you're, you're kind of the only person that is dealing with something at that moment. If it's a singular home burning down, your, your, your stores are still open, you can still go to mcdonald's. It's terrible's tragic. You've lost all your pictures, you've lost all your clothes, but in this situation, what is so different is that you're not going to Target because the Target's gone, or you're not going to Macy's.

Speaker 2 6:04

You're not going to.

Speaker 1 6:05

McDonald's for a burger. It's all gone. And that's why, when they say 12,000 structures, I think people forget your church is gone, your daycare is gone, your schools are gone. That is like rebuilding a whole city, all at once the full infrastructure is gone.

Speaker 2 6:30

It's just a toxic waste dump over there right now. It's. It's damaging, you know. You know the, the nature that was around those beautiful places to live. But, as you said, yeah, the complete infrastructure's gone. Food, uh sorry, not food like water, electricity, gas. You know, even if your home has miraculously survived those fires in those neighborhoods, what's the point? Your neighbors are gone, your whole community is gone. It's just so sad. Some of these people have lived there for many, many, many years, um, and it's just really, really sad. I mean, if you look behind me, right, so we're in the heart of beverly hills here, but probably about five days ago it's a very clear day today the air quality is a lot better over here.

Speaker 1 7:19

I was going to ask how is the air quality at this point? Is it getting better?

Speaker 2 7:25

It's a lot better. It's a lot better. This is a clear day here. But you know, behind me last week, full of smoke, you can see smoke bellowing over here to Beverly Hills because the Palisades fire is so close, on the doorstep of Brentwood, which is that way, santa Monica, just this way. So it was coming in dangerously close. And you know, myself and the wife, we got evacuation notices last week it was last Wednesday Very, very touch and go. You might have heard about the sunset fire and you know we're driving into Beverly Hills. I'll just tell you a bit of a story.

Speaker 2 8:07

We're driving into Beverly Hills. We were just going to fill up the car with some gas and just get some food for the evening. We're driving back because we live about eight minutes that way and this is kind of getting more into your kind of West Hollywood Hancock Park type of neighborhood. But we're on the doorstep of Beverly Hills. We're driving back and then I'm, we're all on like a group message and one of my friends says oh my God, running Canyon's on fire. And I showed it to my wife like no way. And as we've turned left to pull into the corner of our apartment there is a giant fireball to the left of us. Running Canyon is about three miles away from our apartment. You know you always see everybody's influencer pictures and videos on top of Running Canyon looking over the city. I generally hike up there quite a fair bit and as we're turning into the apartment it's on fire and it felt like it was just next to you.

Speaker 2 9:09

So, we hopped up to the top of the roof. All of our neighbors are there in the roof and just looking dead ahead at this giant fireball and it was chaos and so it became real for you at that point.

Speaker 2 9:22

Really real yeah yeah, we packed up a suitcase and we were ready to get a flight out of there that evening to get back to the UK. But then we can. We were getting the evacuation notices but you couldn't evacuate because the freeways are all closed. It was pandemonium on the roads. Nobody could move in the road so you couldn't drive out of there. Lax were cancelling a lot of their flights because the air quality, the smoke, was so bad, so it was touch and go at one point. Thankfully they they put that fire out because it was becoming dangerously close to the sunset street and hollywood boulevard. You know, the famous street with all the hollywood stars yep, I've been there a long time ago.

Speaker 2 10:13

Oh man, that was on the verge of getting completely wiped out. If they didn't contain that fire, it would have been a bit of a difficult situation.

Speaker 2 10:23

And then, when you cross Sunset Boulevard and Hollywood Boulevard, you then hit a whole row of houses and then that was where we lived there with our apartment building. So it was pretty scary. They managed to contain that. But, brad, if you think about it right so far probably. I read up 40,695 acres have burnt since last Tuesday, oh my gosh. And if you think about it, new York City is 14,500, just New York City.

Speaker 1 11:04

Yes.

Speaker 2 11:04

Now imagine that land scale burning and getting wiped out and they still haven't contained it. I think the Palisades fire behind me, they've contained it to about 20% now and the Eaton fire, the big Pasadena fire, the Altadena one, that's about 33% contained but the fires are still burning.

Speaker 1 11:32

Yeah, but are they away from housing more now? Is it more just more forestry or fields and stuff that's burning now and the wind is calmed? Well, the wind jacked up a little bit, I guess, the other day. Is it back down again?

Speaker 2 11:47

So the wind jacked up a little bit the other day, which created the auto fire. You might have seen that one, these embers with the wind. These embers are traveling miles in the air and they're landing on a certain neighborhood. It could be like 10 miles away from the actual fire and it's just igniting and starting up. Um, unfortunately, we've seen, you know, some people um over here that are are kind of arson, vandalizing and actually starting the fires themselves as well, which is stretching the fire department even even more. But, um, yeah, it's been a little bit of a chaotic time, but there is a movement there. There is a real community feel with everybody and everybody's giving back and we're giving back to the fire department and it's going to be okay. Yeah, oh, it's going to be okay, it's going to be okay.

Speaker 1 12:47

I know it'll be okay. We're, we're, we're the U? S and and, and you know, and also our communities within our country, I'm sure, are the same as the UK. When things like this happen, people come together. It doesn't matter if they're Republican, democrat, whatever race they are, it doesn't matter. People come together because, at the end of the day, that fire didn't care who you were. I mean, it was not prejudice at all, it just went through and wiped everything out and it's just so sad. So, one of the things that we've been hearing on the news and things like that I just want to get some clarity on some of this the rent gouging Is there a lot of rent gouging? And also, how do you displace, you know, let's just say, 5,000 homes? Where do those people go?

Speaker 2 13:36

I mean there've got to go somewhere else in the country. This is it. I mean, you know, a lot of the churches over here are letting families come in and actually house in the church and actually sleep in the churches. Hotels are absolutely maxed out and booked up and there's literally been, you know, hotel prices really jacked up as well.

Dealing With California Wildfire Aftermath

Speaker 2 13:51

Understandably for this type type of situation, rent gouging is a real difficult one. Um the I'm getting inquiries every day from people that want to sell or or rent their home and they're absolutely jacking up the price and I'm like, no, look, you just, you just cannot be doing that. These people are desperate. They're willing to pay three times over the rental price just to get safely housed with their family. They will pay whatever at this point. It's a very desperate situation and we are having to have very stern conversations with our clients to say, hey, look, you just can't be doing this. To say, hey, look, you just can't be doing this. But then again you have a lot of clients like I have a listing at the moment in Beverly Hills where the owner is offering his car lease for anybody that's lost their car and he's offering his property fully furnished. So there's little things like that that are going on. These know, these landlords are giving back as much as they can.

Speaker 1 14:55

Unfortunately, that's the stuff we don't hear in the news because that doesn't sell, that doesn't sell the news. But yeah, I know that there's probably for every one situation that is absolutely terrible and it's a human being taking advantage of another human being. There's probably another hundred stories of somebody caring for somebody, you know, making sure their kids are okay, finding them a car, you know. Like you said, there's those things that just don't get reported. Uh, unfortunately. Um, but that's, it's interesting. What are the other things too? What about pets? Like, I think about my dog. I mean, obviously I have children too, but you know, you know we have our dog, is part of our family. Like, where are the pets going? I mean, you could house people, but what do you do with all the, all the?

Speaker 2 15:37

animals.

Speaker 2 15:38

I know, and if you think the thousands of pets are actually misplaced and lost right now and and possibly, you know, lost their lives, which is so unfortunate.

Speaker 2 15:47

We we went to the um Burbank equestrian center the other day. 250 horses there have have lost their, their owners and and the stables of where they live and they're trying to. We were, you know, we were giving them food and we were we were changing their um, their paddocks and and just you know, just being close to the horses because they're deeply distressed by what has happened. They're real spiritual animals and you can just tell by the look in their eye that they are deeply saddened by what's happened. They really feel it and yeah, we were over there the other day just trying to help out and volunteer as much as we can to help the horses. And here's the thing, because the owners have lost their homes and everything around them, they can't take on the horses there and they're all trying to sell their horses in this difficult time as well and get them re-homed as best as possible. It's very, it's very sad for the owners yeah, what about dogs?

Speaker 1 17:00

what about dogs and cats? I guess, because I'm a dog person, I what about that? I mean, is there, where are they? I mean, I love horses too, don't get me wrong, but I always think about my. I just think of, because we have a dog and we have a big dog, and I think about where where would he go? You know what would happen?

Speaker 2 17:15

I mean, they're sticking with the families they are coming along for the ride. Oh, that's good they are getting into the hotels I'm. All of my inquiries have been can you please accept the pets and a lot of the landlords are open to that in in this difficult time.

Speaker 1 17:30

So no, they are sticking with the family absolutely well, and you know what that's therapy for the, for the family too, I mean absolutely you lose your, you lose your family pet. That's that. That could be just just as bad as everything else yeah, for sure it's terrible.

Speaker 1 17:58

And then one of the other things is um, we're hearing a lot about the insurance and I know, hugo, you probably have questions too. I'm not sure if you go over here to the side, you can't see them, but yeah, so what about insurance? I mean, we're here, we're hearing all kinds of stuff about insurance. Are a lot of people insured? Are they not insured? What do you? What are you hearing on the street there?

Speaker 2 18:17

Here's the thing, and I think what I my kind of 10 best tips for you know, dealing with the insurance situation right now, I'm going to send you some content after this, um, after this interview. Great, but you know, just ironically and weirdly, some of the insurance companies pulled their insure insurance plans on these properties prior to the fires. Um, a lot of the owners weren't aware of it. A lot of the owners, a lot of the owners homes, they didn't have insurance of the homes and they they knew of that because you'll see the news reports where they're desperately standing in their front yard hosing down the whole home and and the yards to you know, to not let the fires take their homes, and they're openly saying to the news reporters that we don't have any insurance on our home. We have to save it as best as we can.

Speaker 2 19:16

Um, here's the other thing as well the the insurance payouts. You know they're minimal at best. So, either way, these homeowners are unfortunately going to lose millions in their home devastation. What I would say is and probably a lot of the people have already spoken to their insurance companies, but we're trying to guide and instruct anybody that's lost their homes to call their attorney first and just see where, just see where you sit with that insurance company prior to dealing directly with them.

Speaker 1 19:59

Well, and this is one of those things how many people read their policy? We were just talking about this today. You know your policy comes. It's this thick's this thick. A lot of times you end up just putting it in a file somewhere. You don't read it, you don't really know. And one of the things that I heard recently and this was an interesting one, I just heard it today is that a lot of policies do not cover for fire from natural disaster. They only cover for fire from within your home.

Speaker 1 20:27

So like if yeah, pretty interesting, right, Pretty interesting. I just I just heard this from an agent today that they said that they're finding out that when people are looking at their policies, if it's a natural disaster, if a fire is coming through of the mountaintop or whatever, and it takes your house, that is a different claim than if your toaster started on fire and took your house.

Speaker 2 20:47

A hundred percent, and we you know, myself and the wife we looked at our policy the other day and it was exactly that.

Speaker 1 20:53

No way.

Speaker 2 20:56

Earthquake and fire doesn't cover you, right. So, but, as you said, if there's a fire in your home, your gas cooker, then you're covered. So it's a very interesting situation. So seek your attorney, get the best advice you can before moving forward with your insurance company on that. And I know that it's. It's good to see that a lot of um, a lot of the homes they're actually getting paid out already. Oh, that's good to see that a lot of the homes they're actually getting paid out already.

Speaker 1 21:26

Oh, that's good.

Speaker 2 21:27

Which is great. But Are they getting paid out a little bit too early before they've even, you know, kind of seeked that professional advice,000 something, you said 12. They keep saying 12,000, something, structures.

Speaker 1 21:56

But do we know how many actual living units were actually destroyed?

Speaker 2 22:01

So you said earlier around 5,000. I think that's kind of like.

Speaker 1 22:05

I thought that's what it was A reasonable number.

Speaker 2 22:06

Yeah, I think that's kind of a reasonable number. Think about this. It's certainly going to shift the economy greatly because they're estimating 250 to 275 billion in damage. You know, in damages that's been wiped out by the fires. That's an astronomical amount.

Rebuilding Real Estate After Disasters

Speaker 2 22:27

Can you imagine, so, what that's going to be um doing to the property market? Because we're seeing such a big influx of renters and people desperately trying to buy another home that you know they're going to wait for their insurance payout but thankfully they have the cash to go and buy somewhere. Quite initially, that side of the market has tremendously picked up. There was already a shortage of rentals and people selling their homes here. The lack of inventory has been quite difficult over the past year, I would say. So now you're going to see property prices are going to increase, um, you know, quite significantly, and these, yeah, these unfortunate people are will be paying over the odds to to get them rehoused and into something quite quickly. Yeah, um, will that bring down the interest rates ultimately, with higher property prices? We will have to see. Yeah, but, and right now there's a big advantage for anybody looking to invest into la. We're having a lot of international inquiries from investors looking for multifamily investment opportunities just because of the high demand for the rental market right now.

Speaker 1 24:07

And it could change your landscape there. You could get to a point where some of the streets that used to be single-family homes are now each lot has a duplex, you know, just because you get more people in a smaller area.

Speaker 2 24:24

Yeah, the rebuild is going to be interesting. Yeah, it will be.

Speaker 1 24:27

So let's go back to you're talking about the inventory. This is the thing I worry about with you and other realtors. I mean, mean, we obviously very concerned about all the people in your area that lost a home, but we also have people like yourself that this is their, this is their life, this is how you make money. My thing I can't imagine if we lost 5 000 homes here in our county. We would all be out of business wow, it's just crazy.

Speaker 2 24:53

Thankfully what California.

Speaker 1 24:54

What are you selling? You're selling just the pieces of land. That's all that's there.

Speaker 2 24:58

Here's the thing Myself and my team, we've been hitting the phones today because we're getting so many inquiries from our clients that have lost their homes. We've just been hammering the phones trying to find those listings. We are, we've just been hammering the phones trying to find those listings, but focus on areas of Palos Verdes, Newport Beach, Laguna Beach you know beautiful neighborhoods just outside of LA. A lot of people want to move back to Santa Monica. Marina del Rey, you have to pivot.

Speaker 1 25:30

You have to pivot.

Speaker 2 25:32

And you just have to yeah, you just have to pivot, you have to pivot and you just have to get grinding and see who is now in a position to sell their home. All of the people we were speaking to before the back end of last year that were kind of contemplating selling their home, waiting for the interest rates to go down, and that type of thing Now it's a different conversation. Now we really need your home, type of thing. Now it's a different conversation. Now we really need your home. Do you know, is there a desire to sell right now and a lot of the time? They're. They're open to it, thankfully, and they're looking to move out of the state or even out of the country. So it's good, it's going to be interesting, for sure.

Speaker 1 26:12

you know palm springs, certain areas like this surrounding Los Angeles, gotcha, yeah, and then what they could do too is take the insurance money or whatever, move to there and then over time, rebuild what you had and sell that. You can sell that, then Build a new home and sell it, or build a duplex or something else. So there's definitely a lot of possibilities out there for sure.

Speaker 2 26:38

and then and what's also happening now and I have to help a few of my clients with um they're going to get the insurance payout some of them already have it and they're just selling their land parcels and moving on. Yeah, so you know, they're going to come in with a big clearance of their area and then what you're going to see over the next few months is a lot of land parcel listings popping up all over the place. Right, every agent over here is going to be selling land.

Speaker 1 27:12

That's right. You're right. That's what you're going to see. You guys are going to be great at selling land, because once they get rid of all the toxic stuff and all the stuff that's left over, you've got a lot to sell, and then the builders are going to be gone. Nuts, I mean, I should just start a building company and come over there and hang out with you.

Speaker 2 27:28

That's it. Yeah, absolutely, it's a good idea. It's a great idea. I met a couple of developers the other day for coffee and we are really formulating a plan of how they can rebuild LA, rebuild these structures and these homes in a more safety-efficient way, because I couldn't believe it when I moved here, brad, so many of these homes are just made out of wood. I'm just so not used to that. Yeah, we're used to red brick, solid, you know, solid homes with solid foundation, and over here they're just made out of wood.

Speaker 1 28:06

so if you get a big gust of wind ripping through your neighborhood, you're you're in trouble yeah, we're all built out of wood here, but we don't have we don't have the threats that you have. We don't have earthquakes, we don't have wildfires, we don't have any of that stuff. So for us it's, you know, it's a norm. But you know, florida, they don't build anything except for cement. It's all concrete because of hurricane. Absolutely, yeah well, I think that's going to change. Your building codes are going to change there's.

Speaker 2 28:36

There's a lot of news on on there about the um, the rebuild smart la 2028 on the lead up to the olympics. I would, I would urge your, your listeners, to go and check out some of those youtube videos and see their grandmaster plan of what's going on there. Makes you think, you know. Suddenly we get all of these crazy fires in January, but you know, the most unprecedented event that's ever happened here in LA. And then there's a lot of news coming out about this rebuild smart LA that's going to happen on the lead up to the Olympics.

Speaker 1 29:12

So it's kind of ironic in a way. So the so the conspiracy theories are out there, I'm sure.

Speaker 2 29:18

Absolutely yeah, of course, With any occurrence that's the way it happens.

Speaker 1 29:21

Well, I'll tell you what I wanted to. I want to say thanks. We're going to wrap this up because I know you're busy trying to help your clients and and we we're going to get moving here, but I want to say thank you for coming on here.

Speaker 2 29:32

I really do appreciate it.

Speaker 1 29:34

I really appreciate it and you know, we've become friends via via online and email and texts and things like that and I want to say thanks for staying in touch because you know it's it's. It's great to talk to you and I'm glad that you guys are pushing forward. You're, everybody's going to be okay. It's just going to take some time.

Speaker 2 29:51

Yeah, definitely I'm going to. I'm going to email you. You know, lots of kind of like like giving back links, how? Yes, that's the other thing.

Speaker 1 30:01

I wanted to ask you that. Actually, there's one of the things I want to ask you before we stop where can we, where can we go to help and what's the best way to help? Because I know people on the East coast are are definitely helping. We're sending you know things. I know Keller Williams, the company that I I work for.

Speaker 1 30:17

They've been there, they're coming in and they're going to be bringing lots of water and all kinds of stuff that we bring, yeah, all that good stuff and and it's that's one of the things that we give to also, but I'd love to know that. So, get me all that information, cause I will definitely put it out on all of our social media. Uh, you know, instagram, facebook, whatever, and, uh, you know, we wish you well.

Speaker 2 30:38

Absolutely, Brad. I'll keep you absolutely updated with all of this. Really appreciate your time and, yeah, I'm going to send you as much information as you can and uh, thankful for all of your listeners and this great interview. Thanks so much, man.

Speaker 1 30:51

Thanks, buddy, I appreciate it. Take care of yourself, all right. Bye, bye, all right. Thanks for watching this special edition of the Brad Wiseman show. We appreciate it. We will definitely be putting all the information online on social media with whether it be Facebook or Instagram, everywhere that you can find us. We're going to put information about this interview, about, also, how you can help. Johnny's going to get us all that information, and if you want to reach out to Johnny, you can do that too. We'll hook you up and get you directly to him. Okay, that's about it, thanks. Thanks for watching. Have a great day.