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Laura Kate Jones, a real estate agent in Los Angeles, is trying to find an apartment for a client whose Pacific Palisades home turned to rubble this week. The woman and her two children were left with no belongings but the clothes on their backs.
Ms. Jones has been scouring the West Los Angeles rental market to find a house that the family could rent for the next eight months, or longer. On Friday morning, she noticed something disturbing on the rents of at least three of the properties she had been tracking: 15 to 20 percent increases overnight.
The sudden surge in rental costs took Ms. Jones by surprise, but aligned with what she has noticed since wildfires started to tear through the Los Angeles area on Tuesday. Ms. Jones was touring a rental house in Beverly Hills with her client on Thursday when the listing agent raised the monthly cost by $3,000 — on the spot.
Agents and landlords are aware that some displaced Angelenos might be willing to pay given the circumstance.
“People are so panicked and desperate to get into a house right now that they’re just throwing money into the wind,” Ms. Jones said. “People taking advantage of this. It’s horrendous.”
California’s state of emergency, declared by Gov. Gavin Newsom on Tuesday, bans price gouging for a range of goods and services, including rental housing. That means any rent increase above 10 percent since the start of the state of emergency is illegal for the duration of the crisis.
But since Tuesday, some landlords and their agents have raised prices by more than what California law allows. These price increases come as hundreds, if not thousands, of displaced Los Angeles residents search for interim housing while they figure out their next steps, worsening an already tight rental housing market in the region.
A review of active rental listings on Zillow shows that rents for several properties in West Los Angeles have increased more than 10 percent since Tuesday. These price jumps have ranged from 15 percent on a five-bedroom house near Century City, to an eye-popping 64 percent spike for a one-bedroom rental in Venice.
Samira Tapia, a real estate agent in Los Angeles, has also been working with families devastated by the fires. Among her clients is a couple with a 1½-year-old baby, whose Altadena home is no longer standing. One rental house the family visited, in North Hollywood, surged by $800 a month on Wednesday, to $5,700.
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