Palisades and Altadena Fire Rebuild: Insurance and Contractors

Twenty-one months after the January 2025 fires, the Palisades fire rebuild and the Eaton fire rebuild in Altadena are a race between two clocks. Permits keep getting slower: early 2025 filers waited about 95 days, and a year later the wait was 134 days in the Palisades and 199 in Altadena. Meanwhile the insurance money for a place to live keeps running down. On 2025 and 2026 permits, the median rebuild declares $600,000 in the Palisades and $442,000 in Altadena.

Top photo: northern Altadena along Lake Avenue a few days after the Eaton fire. Photo by Grigory Heaton, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

In a Nutshell

• Where it stands: 1,557 of 3,984 destroyed Palisades homes have filed to rebuild and 48 are finished. In Altadena, 32% of destroyed homes are under construction and 3% are finished.
• The trend: applications filed in early 2026 waited about 134 days for a permit in the Palisades and 199 in Altadena, against roughly 95 for early 2025 filers. Recent waits point to four to seven months, not three.
• The insurance clock: the law sets at least 24 months of living-expense coverage time, with extensions for delays beyond the owner's control, and payments stop at the policy's dollar limit.
• Eaton deadline: claims to Southern California Edison's compensation program close on November 30, 2026.

Where does the rebuild stand in the Palisades and Altadena?

Partway, and the two neighborhoods are moving at different speeds. In the City of Los Angeles, 1,557 of the 3,984 single-family homes destroyed in the Palisades fire have filed for a new home and 48 are finished. In unincorporated Altadena, 42% of the 5,561 destroyed single-family homes have a permit or are past it, and 183 are finished.

Palisades: City of Los Angeles building permit record, new single-family and two-family home permits in ZIP 90272 filed since January 7, 2025, matched by parcel to homes the county recorded as destroyed, through October 11, 2026. Altadena: LA County Public Works parcel rebuild tracker, October 16, 2026, and county permit case history. Medians count applications still waiting. Compiled by The Renology.

The 36% of destroyed Altadena homes with no application on record are not necessarily undecided. The tracker does not say why, and the group could include lots that have sold, claims still in dispute and families waiting on settlements. Condo and apartment owners are mostly absent from the Palisades filings: 633 multi-unit residential parcels were destroyed in the city, and their rebuilds run through associations and lenders on a different track.

The city and county recovery dashboards count every permit type and every unincorporated burn area, so their totals run higher than these single-family figures. The direction of the wait is clearer in the permit records themselves.

How long does a Palisades fire rebuild permit take now, and Altadena's?

Longer than it did for the first filers. A single-family rebuild filed in the first half of 2025 got its permit in a median of about three months in both areas. Each later group of filings has waited longer, and the records do not say why.

Median calendar days from application to permit, counting applications that are still waiting. Filings after March 2026 have not had time to show a full median.

The county's own measure points the same way. Its dashboard reports an average of 160 business days to a new residential permit, counted from the county recovery application, which is roughly seven and a half months on the calendar.

The rebuild rules themselves have not tightened. In the City of Los Angeles, Executive Order 1 lets a like-for-like home rebuild within 110% of the old footprint and height, and the city says it reviews complete applications within 30 days. Executive Order 8 lets an eligible new design skip local Coastal Act and CEQA review, and since February 2026 registered architects and civil engineers can self-certify code compliance for eligible projects. In unincorporated Altadena, the county's like-for-like rule allows up to 10% or 200 square feet more floor area, whichever is greater. Altadena owners work through the county's one-stop center at 464 W Woodbury Rd., Suite 210, and Palisades owners through LADBS and the city's rebuild centers.

The permit descriptions also show what is going up. Of the 1,557 Palisades parcels, the descriptions for 1,424 mention fire sprinklers, 1,083 mention two stories and 308 mention a basement.

All of that time comes out of one budget that does not pause for plan check.

How long will insurance keep paying for a place to live?

The law sets the time, and the policy sets the money. California Insurance Code section 2060 requires at least 24 months of additional living expense coverage after a loss in a declared state of emergency. The insurer must grant up to 12 more months when the rebuild is delayed by circumstances beyond the policyholder's control and the policyholder acts in good faith and with reasonable diligence, and further six-month extensions are available for good cause.

An extension adds time, not money. Payments stop at the policy's dollar limit for living expenses, and some families who have been renting since January 2025 may reach that limit before the calendar runs out. For January 2025 losses, the 36-month mark falls in early 2028.

That is why the permit trend matters. A family that files in late 2026, waits six months for a permit and then builds for a year and a half would finish in late 2028, months past that mark. On a total loss you can also ask your insurer to advance at least four months of living expenses at once, under section 2061.

Which contents rule applies to your claim?

That depends on when the rule took effect, and the answer is not the same for every claim. On January 1, 2026, SB 495 raised the amount insurers must offer for contents without an itemized inventory on a covered total loss of a furnished primary home. The Department of Insurance warns that some of the 2026 laws may not apply to earlier disaster claims, so ask your insurer in writing which version it is applying.

Inventory deadlines have more room than many owners assume. The current law bars an insurer from requiring proof of loss sooner than 100 days after the loss, allows three-month extensions for good cause, and recognizes that an inventory can be premature while the house is not yet under construction. These protections are in the 2026 version of the law, so ask whether your insurer applies them to a January 2025 loss, and make any request for more time in writing.

What if the insurance check will not cover the rebuild?

There may be more room than the dwelling limit suggests. If your policy includes replacement cost coverage, Insurance Code 2051.5 gives at least 36 months from the first actual cash value payment to collect it, with six-month extensions for good cause. The same section lets you rebuild elsewhere or buy an existing home without losing that coverage, up to what rebuilding on your own lot would have cost and within your policy limits, with no deduction for the land at the new site.

If the dwelling limit falls short on a covered total loss, section 10103.7 lets you combine payments under the dwelling and other-structures coverage toward the rebuild. Contents cannot be added to that pool. A replacement-cost policy must also include building code upgrade coverage of at least 10% of the dwelling limit, which can help pay for current-code work the old house never had, subject to the policy's terms.

Two money sources sit outside the policy, and each has its own rules:

• Edison, for the Eaton fire. Southern California Edison's Wildfire Recovery Compensation Program closes to new claims on November 30, 2026. SCE says filing a claim and reviewing an offer do not waive your rights. Accepting an offer is a settlement, so read it with a lawyer of your choosing.
• Your lender. If the mortgage company holds the insurance check in a loss-draft account, Civil Code 2954.85 requires it to pay at least 2% simple interest per year on qualifying one-to-four-unit California homes, with a narrow exception for funds a regulator requires to sit in a non-interest-bearing trust account. In October 2026 the state's financial regulator ordered lenders to report on how they are releasing payouts. Keep a dated record of every draw request.

If your policy is from the California FAIR Plan, the rules differ. Its dwelling policy is named-peril, its sample form pays actual cash value unless dwelling replacement cost was added, and its fair rental value benefit is not the same as ordinary living-expense coverage. Read your own declarations page, not a sample.

The Department of Insurance hotline is 1-800-927-4357, and its wildfire resources page covers the debris removal program and free mediation for disputed claims. This is general information, not legal or insurance advice.

What separates a safe rebuild contractor from a risky one?

Check the license before you check the price. California requires a license for work totaling $1,000 or more. Smaller jobs need one too if they require a permit or use employees, and a small piece cannot be split off a larger project to stay under the limit. Unlicensed disaster-related work can be charged as a felony under Business and Professions Code 7028.16. Look up the license number, its classification and its workers' compensation coverage through the CSLB disaster help center.

Then read the contract against the rules that already protect you. State law counts rebuilding a home destroyed in a disaster as home improvement work, so, unless a qualifying bond or joint-control arrangement is in place, the down payment is capped at $1,000 or 10% of the contract, whichever is less, and progress payments cannot run ahead of completed work and delivered materials. The CSLB also says contractors may not use time-and-materials or cost-plus contracts for disaster-related home improvement work.

The questions worth asking every bidder:

• How many 2025 fire rebuilds have you taken to permit, and how many to a certificate of occupancy?
• Who prepares and submits the plans, and is the project eligible for self-certification?
• How does your payment schedule line up with my lender's draw schedule?
• What is in your allowances, and how are overruns handled?
• What is your written start date, and does the schedule finish before my living-expense coverage ends?

A public adjuster is a separate decision. California sets no percentage cap on their fee, so the rate is negotiable, and after a catastrophic disaster you can cancel a signed contract within five calendar days of signing and receiving your copy. In writing, get the fee, the scope and what happens to money your insurer has already paid.

For the parts of the house that will be judged by fire performance, the California roofing guide covers fire-rated materials and current costs. If your lot sits below a burned slope, read the debris-flow section of how to prepare a California home for El Niño before winter.

The Renology Take

California has rewritten its wildfire insurance rules twice since these fires. SB 495 raised what insurers must pay for contents without an inventory, starting in 2026. SB 876 requires insurers to offer more generous living-expense and replacement-cost coverage, starting in 2028. Both are real improvements, and both arrive after the families whose losses prompted them.

That gap is worth naming, because neither bill clearly reaches back to 2025 claims. We would encourage every January 2025 policyholder to ask their insurer, in writing, whether it will apply the newer standards voluntarily, and to keep the answer. Some may say no. A written no is still worth more than an assumption.

Methodology

See the Renology Methodology for how sources are reviewed, ranges are normalized, and planning-data limits are handled.

Palisades. City of Los Angeles building permit record from data.lacity.org, permits for new single-family and two-family homes in ZIP 90272 filed from January 7, 2025 through the October 11, 2026 refresh, with ADUs, garages and other accessory structures excluded by use type. Permits were grouped by parcel and matched to the 3,984 single-family parcels the county recorded as destroyed; 1,557 matched.

Altadena. LA County Public Works parcel rebuild tracker, destroyed single-family parcels in the unincorporated Eaton burn area, updated October 16, 2026. Timing and declared value come from the county's EPIC-LA case history, single-family cases in both the New and Rebuild Project work classes, grouped by address (2,531 addresses). Declared value is the highest positive valuation per address, 2,515 addresses. Palisades declared value is from each parcel's first filing.

Timing. Medians run from application to first permit and count applications that are still waiting, so they are not limited to the cases that moved fastest. Declared construction value is self-reported for permit fees and is not a contract price.

Law. Insurance and contractor rules are summarized from statute text and agency pages read on October 18, 2026. SB 876, signed in September 2026, changes several of the insurance rules from January 1, 2028.