L.A. landlords accused of price gouging say they’re responding to unprecedented demand from wealthy wildfire victims

Los Angeles landlords are being accused of price gouging, but some say they’re just keeping up with the demand from desperate, deep-pocketed people who are making over-the-top offers in order to secure a new place to live.

With wildres having destroyed an estimated 12,000 structures across L.A., many who have lost their homes and apartments are scrambling to nd places to rent. With the available supply woefully low, online real-estate listings reviewed by MarketWatch appear to show that some landlords have jacked up rents as demand has skyrocketed.

Landlords who have hiked rents recently could be violating a California law banning price increases of more than 10% on essentials such as food, gas and housing during a state of emergency. Yet hundreds of listings in the city appear to be advertising rents that have increased by more than 10% since Gov. Gavin Newsom’s state-of-emergency declaration on Jan. 7.

Officials including California Attorney General Rob Bonta have urged people to report price gouging. “We have no tolerance for it,” Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said in a post on X, adding that she has launched a new system for reporting “illegally hiked rents.”

Tenant advocacy groups are also naming and shaming property owners who have abruptly hiked rental prices over the last week.

Chelsea Kirk, an organizer for the Los Angeles Tenants Union, told MarketWatch that after Newsom declared a state of emergency, she began looking for rental listings that were priced unusually high. She collected links on a spreadsheet and circulated it on social media so others could add examples of apparent price gouging.

As of Wednesday, the spreadsheet showed more than 1,000 listings for which landlords were suspected to have illegally inflated rents. Examples included a four-bedroom in Pacific Palisades listed on Jan. 13 at a monthly rent of $18,500; it had most recently been listed for $8,900. Another was a three-bedroom in Studio City listed at $16,000 a month on Jan. 9, up from $10,000 in August.

“Landlords aren’t just going to hold back from raising rents and earning more money out of the goodness of their heart,” said Kirk, who has been involved in tenant organizing for eight years. “Their approach to this is, it’s a business for them. It’s not a shelter for other people. So I’m not surprised we’re in this situation.”

Some renters are also pushing up prices But there’s another factor that’s making the situation worse, Kirk noted.

Many of the homeowners fleeing the wildfires are from wealthier neighborhoods and have more purchasing power than a typical L.A. tenant — and they are willing and able to pay inflated prices, she said.

The median home price in Pacific Palisades, where fire has destroyed some of Southern California’s most valuable houses, was $4.7 million as of December, according to Realtor.com. The median rent was $12,000 — 538% above the national average — as of mid-January. (Realtor.com is operated by News Corp subsidiary Move Inc.; MarketWatch publisher Dow Jones is also a subsidiary of News Corp.)

In addition, some people who have lost their homes have insurance to help them foot the bill for temporary housing, so they may be able to pay more for a temporary rental, Kirk said.

“We have had a supply issue for many years, and the demand of 10,000-plus families has sent everything into a frenzy,” said Michelle Schwartz, a managing partner at the Agency Los Angeles, a real-estate brokerage.

“When you’re dealing with the highest-end communities, they are willing and can throw money at an opportunity to get their family settled until they figure out their next steps,” she added. “We are seeing over 10 applications on one property. Naturally, this drives the price up.”

Some landlords are being confronted with tough choices as a result, Schwartz said. “How does a landlord decide which family to rent to when all qualifications are equal?” she said. “It’s heartbreaking all around, but we simply don’t have enough of the type of housing

these victims are wanting.”

Real estate agents and landlords respond

Some real estate agents working with landlords say they are pricing properties at what they believe to be a fair rate. Others said allegations of price gouging were the result of a misunderstanding.

But in two instances, brokers and landlords lowered asking rents after MarketWatch inquired about the significant increases in their listings.

One Pacific Palisades property listing that was submitted to the price gouging spreadsheet came on the market on Jan. 10 at a monthly rent of $49,500. The home had last been listed less than a year ago, in May 2024, for $40,000 and was removed in July before reappearing this month on Zillow, a real-estate platform that lists available rentals. A Zillow representative said the company is taking steps to address price gouging on its platform.

The listing broker told MarketWatch that the recent price increase wasn’t price gouging, but rather was due to the fact that the property would now be provided fully furnished, after having been offered unfurnished in May. The broker added that the price was negotiable and said that rents fluctuate with the seasons and are higher at the start of the year.

After MarketWatch pointed out that the listing was on the L.A. Tenants Union’s spreadsheet, the broker said the landlord would lower the rent to $44,000 per month from $49,500. (The price was indeed lowered to $44,000.)

Another broker told MarketWatch that important context was missing regarding her listing, which was also on the Tenants Union’s spreadsheet and appeared to show a substantial price increase.

The property, in Playa del Rey, about 40 minutes south of Pacific Palisades, came on the market on Jan. 11 for $12,000 a month. When a unit at that address was last listed, in October 2022, the landlord was asking $2,795 a month.

The listing broker, who told MarketWatch that she thought “price gouging is horrible,” said the nearly 330% price increase was because the property listed previously was a studio unit, whereas the one on the market now was a fully furnished three-bedroom unit in the same building. “People really need to do their research before they accuse people

of something,” she said. The listing was removed on Jan. 13.

The broker for another property —listed at a rent of $25,000 as of Jan. 14, a 70% increase over when it was last listed, in November 2023 — told MarketWatch that the rent had gone up over nearly two years and that the new amount reflected the fact that the apartment was fully furnished. The broker added that real-estate agents were confused about the time period covered by the price-gouging law — whether the 10% cap on rent increases applied to properties listed within the last six months or within the last two years.

An additional wrinkle is that some prospective tenants are making offers above the listed rent, the broker added. “If people of free will are willing to pay more to beat the competition … what is a landlord or agent supposed to do?” he said.

Another property was listed at $10,000 on Jan. 9, a 33.3% increase over its listed rent of $7,500 in November 2024. After being told about the 10% cap on rent increases, the property owner questioned why he couldn’t set the price on his own. He later told MarketWatch that he had reduced the rent to $9,000, a 20% increase from the November rental price, adding that he was still looking for tenants.

But others did not offer any explanation for big increases in asking rents. One property in Beverly Hills was listed for $67,500 in rent as of Jan. 12, a 133% increase from the rent it was listed for in October 2023. The company that listed the property did not respond to a request for comment.

Avi Sinai, a real-estate attorney in Los Angeles, said he’s not surprised by the skyrocketing rents, but added going after landlords for price gouging won’t be easy. “Renters are already offering above-asking bids for leases, just like we’d seen during COVID,” he said.

When a property gets 25 offers over the asking price, it’s not a case of price gouging, Sinai said, adding: “It’s just the market responding to new conditions. There’s a demand to lease high-end homes now, and that will increase prices.” In the wake of the res, tenant organizers are calling on elected officials to enact a rent freeze and eviction moratorium to protect vulnerable tenants.

One silver lining of the rental market chaos is that some listings that had not been on the market for months or even years are now reappearing. Some property owners who previously “swore off renting” are now re-entering the market, Sinai said, which could ultimately help renters by putting more inventory on the market.

What happened when one person tried to convince landlords to lower rents

Zoe Weber, who submitted a few examples of possible price gouging to the L.A. Tenants Union’s spreadsheet, also sent text messages to agents and landlords, warning them that they could be violating state law by increasing rents by more than 10%. She said she was hoping to get them to lower the rents.

“I’ve had mixed reactions,” Weber, who works at a nonprofit focused on housing and homelessness in Los Angeles, told MarketWatch. Some responded by saying that they weren’t aware of the law and planned to lower their asking rents.

But after she wrote to one landlord telling him she had reported his listing to authorities for illegal price gouging during a crisis, he wrote back, accusing her of being a scammer.

“I can’t imagine using someone’s worst moment, where they’ve just lost everything and they’re going through kind of a once-in-a-lifetime trauma, and to capitalize off of it and try and get more money for myself,” Weber said. “So it’s been kind of gratifying to be like, no. I’m going to try and do something about them.”

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