People who lost homes in the Palisades and Eaton fires can now go online to pick vetted residential templates that could save them money and be ready as early as next year.
Builders Alliance, a nonprofit organization formed in response to the fires, on Friday launched a portal that offers survivors a selection of homes, filtered by lot size, price range and other preferences.
“We’re trying to create an ‘easy’ button for homeowners,” said Lew Horne, the chairman of Project Recovery, a group of academics and real estate industry experts who had created a road map for recovery.
Construction crews work on rebuilding a home and properties after the federal cleanup in Altadena on Sept. 10.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
Project Recovery’s March report — which was compiled by professors in the real estate graduate schools at USC and UCLA, along with the Los Angeles chapter of the Urban Land Institute, a real estate nonprofit education and research institute — said an alliance of builders could work together for economies of scale to speed up reconstruction and make it more affordable and predictable.
The web portal is the latest stop on the report’s road map. It makes it easy for those who lost their homes to pick templates and receive competing bids from builders who have been vetted by Project Recovery.
“We’re keeping a close eye” on the builders, Horne said. “Buyers are going to have a quality home at a quality price in a time frame they can count on.”
Horne is head of the Los Angeles chapter of the Urban Land Institute and president of real estate brokerage CBRE for Southern California. Other leaders of Project Recovery include Stuart Gabriel, director of the UCLA Ziman Center for Real Estate, and Richard Green, director of the USC Lusk Center for Real Estate.
Homeowners using the portal can match their address to home choices that include pre-designed turnkey residences at costs equal to or below average insurance proceeds, Horne said. Owners can also choose more custom builds.
The new Builders Alliance consists of 10 licensed homebuilders, ranging in size from small boutique firms to larger companies such as Richmond American Homes and Brookfield Residential.
Brookfield built more than 200 homes in the La Vina gated community in Altadena, 52 of which burned down, Chief Executive Adrian Foley said.
“Obviously, we were devastated by all of the loss that’s taken place here,” he said. “We wanted to lean in and do anything we could to help out.”
Foley said the consortium was devised to get large and small builders working together to “procure the right material costs and procure plans and specifications that would be appealing to the end user so we could collaborate to beat down costs, be more efficient, and hopefully drive a higher percentage of rebuilding.”
The consortium expects to complete some homes by the third quarter of 2026.
The foundation of the Builders Alliance portal is a digital representation that maps every residential parcel in the Palisades and Eaton fire areas. It uses AI technology and is powered by Canibuild, which provides site-planning software for the residential construction industry.
The portal’s map is trained on local zoning regulations and pairs each lot with extensive menus of designs and costs. Property owners enter their address and can filter options by preferences such as square footage, bedrooms, bathrooms and price.
