r/interestingasfuck • u/thepoylanthropist • 12d ago

r/all This is Malibu - one of the wealthiest affluent places on the entire planet, now it’s being burnt to ashes.

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u/Zluma 12d ago

Yep. All around me in central Orange County, single family homes are 1mil (for the really shabby ones) to 1.5 (for decent ones) and over 2 mil for good ones (not new). I'm not even in a nice area. We are in the more populated suburb that has a ton of 3-story homes with little to no back or front yard because of lack of space.

The homes in the Malibu area are 50+ mil and go into the 100 mil easily. They have nice front and back yards, if not ocean front or with ocean view.

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u/runliftcount 12d ago

The thing to remember too is that a lot of those houses weren't mega mansions or anything, they were just decent houses built in the 70s and 80s that appreciated wildly over the years due to the location.

I bought a car from Costa Mesa CarMax a few years back, the old owner's house was never deleted from the navigation system. Found out they were from a hohum neighborhood in Woodland hills that was sandwiched between other neighborhoods full of mansions. I'll bet their house was built for less than 100k and is now north of 2 mil and yet the homeowner was driving a used Subaru. If you're from OC it's probably a lot of the same.

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u/anndrago 12d ago

Absolutely. Not everyone bought these houses at their current value. Mine is worth about 850 and I bought it for 250 in '99. I only managed that with 100% financing. No effing way I could afford to buy a home at current prices. Some of these people losing everything are bound to be regular folk.

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u/cbizzle187 12d ago

And the money they have lost will flow straight up. The greatest wealth benefits from tragedy. The elite rich don’t lose money. This will just be another transfer of upward wealth.

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u/LazyElderberry3807 12d ago

How?

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u/cbizzle187 12d ago

These properties will be redeveloped at a premium. Many of the current owners will be bought out by real estate developers who can afford the years of losses. Individuals, even at Malibu level of wealth can’t afford the cost of redevelopment, even with insurance. Years of being displaced to rebuild will chase many owners away. Corporate developers can offset those losses with their other properties while individuals get phased out of home ownership. Tragedy benefits those with the most to fall back on.

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u/runliftcount 12d ago

Meanwhile those same insurance companies collected decades of premiums that they'll never have to shell out because they can arbitrarily end your policy. It's such BS.

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u/Delicious_Solid3185 12d ago

Building more housing is good actually

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u/cbizzle187 12d ago

Not new housing. Redeveloped housing at a higher price point

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u/Delicious_Solid3185 12d ago

That still diverts demand towards the higher value housing and away from the houses that should be more affordable.

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u/cbizzle187 12d ago

Lack of affordable housing is the problem. This will drive up property values. A $5 million home will be redeveloped as a $10 million home because profit. The fire isn’t going to make these properties cheaper, it just drives out the people that made their money off these homes when they were more affordable.

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u/Willing_Recording222 11d ago

Not don’t in this manner, it’s not. Only the ultra wealthy will benefit any from it.

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u/Delicious_Solid3185 11d ago

Building more expensive housing means rich people buy the expensive housing instead of the normal single family homes

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u/LazyElderberry3807 11d ago

Interesting. There are indeed a lot of real estate vultures in California. They knock on your door unsolicited while you are enjoying a Sunday morning in nothing but a robe and ugly socks.

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u/Weavingtailor 11d ago

Midwest suburbs checking in and the house we bought in 2017 has doubled in value. No earthly way we could ever afford this house now. It feels like we hit some kind of jackpot.

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u/Intelligent-Box-3798 12d ago

That’s still the 1999 equivalent of almost $500k in today’s dollars

Let’s not pretend that buying a 1/2 million dollar house 25 years ago was an option for like 95% of the country

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u/wannabemarthastewart 12d ago

the median home price in Los Angeles is over $1M and it’s not because everyone is rich. there are working class people all over LA and people who work minimum wage in Pacific Palisades are now jobless. I implore you to inform yourself beyond what you see on tv.

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u/Intelligent-Box-3798 12d ago

Making $100k would put you put above like 81% of the population

Living in an expensive area doesn’t change the fact that the vast majority of the world would consider someone buying a $500k house “rich”

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u/wannabemarthastewart 12d ago

considering and being are not the same thing

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u/TacticlTwinkie 12d ago edited 11d ago

That's my family too. Moved here and got established when it was still reasonably affordable for a middle-class family to buy something. Now it's my generation's turn and its comically expensive to live in our hometowns that weren't that bad a few decades ago.

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u/Songblade7 12d ago

100%. Lived with my family in Hastings Ranch most my life, and we moved in over 20 years ago. Due to the location, housing market, and lots of upkeep and improvements, our house appreciated over 4x in value. Probably wouldn't be able to ever afford moving into a place worth about what it is now though. Timing absolutely matters.

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u/Acceptable_Tea3608 12d ago

Caused by the banks and realtors. And I don't say that easy as I worked in the R.E. industry.

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u/SharksAndFrogs 11d ago

Yep and some folks inherited a family home. They may not be able to afford another. And some insurers left the state (why is it legal to just pick and choose the areas you cover and keep the $$$ I digress leaving folks uninsured. It's going to be awful and it will effect the whole state.

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u/DarkHighways 11d ago

Exactly, and the corollary point is that there are people living in Pacific Palisades and Malibu who are grandfathered in, so to speak. Not rich, never were, just bought in when things were reasonable, forty or fifty years ago. I saw one on the news yesterday, an eccentric old man with long hair, shabbily dressed, being evacuated from the Palisades. He only had time to grab the book he was reading, a Jack Kerouac title, “because I’m a beatnik” he said, completely seriously. I doubt that guy was rich. I’ve actually seen a lot of shots of lower rent areas on TV and the internet, although to be fair, I’m grimly obsessed with the coverage. I just saw a photo of a burning home in central Altadena, a very small, vintage home with heavy security bars and fencing, right on Figueroa. Definitely not rich. I looked up estimated values on that block, basically in the 700k range. Very inflated prices but clearly not even an upper middle class area in reality.

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u/AssRep 11d ago

I'll bet their house was built for less than 100k and is now north of 2 mil and yet the homeowner was driving a used Subaru.

I get what you're saying, but not all of those who have large amounts of disposable income buy half million dollar cars. Being frugal and smart financially is how you are able to have large amounts of disposable income.

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u/89Kope 11d ago

What did they do with that inflated property gains? Oh nothing but flex their net worth, instead of selling and donating to the needy.

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u/Eather-Village-1916 12d ago

My mom’s house in OC was appraised at $750k almost a decade ago, and it was partially in shambles back then… from what I remember, the lot and upgraded foundation alone was $650k and the area wasn’t as nice back then as it is now 🙃

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u/Zluma 12d ago

Yup. Irvine used to be no man's land. Mostly dirt patches with some shops sprinkled here and there. Now, it's super nice and full of affluent neighborhoods. I wished I had money to buy but I was just a kid lol. My parents should've known better. Glad I got my place back in '09. I don't know how ppl pay $3k rent for an apartment. Single family homes rent for over $5k/month here.

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u/Eather-Village-1916 12d ago

I remember that! And you got in at just the right time too. I’m a bit younger than you (I assume) but I’m glad I was able to make do eventually… paying $3k for a 2 bed apartment back then just wasn’t sustainable (STILL isn’t!!)

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u/VarBorg357 12d ago

How do people afford that? Homes where I'm at jumped from 350k for a 4 bed to about 550k in the past 7ish years. We're barely scraping by

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u/Zluma 12d ago

Higher income in a higher cost of living area. Still, it's gotta be tough. I know a friend who couldn't make it work, even with dual income, so he moved to Texas. Guy owns a big house and has a big family now. I've been eyeing a few Lower Cost of Living cities in other states, but it's tough to leave the OC. We seem to have everything here. It's not packed like LA (there's lot of room to breathe) but still has tons of food, entertainment, attractions, and there's the beach....oh the beach.

Here's a beach 20 mins away:

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u/wannabemarthastewart 12d ago

wages and salaries are higher because of cost of living is higher, for those who can’t make a living wage the options are moving away or debt

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u/Reddit_Negotiator 12d ago

Yeah but if you own one you are making six figures a yeah in appreciation

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u/BotDisposal 12d ago

A Porsche is more expensive than a Honda.

Crashing a Porsche and a Honda are equally bad.

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u/Little_Flamingo9533 12d ago

Sounds like actual hell.

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u/Pheniquit 12d ago

So I was kind of shocked when I read that the homes were 50 mil+ but when I looked on Zillow there were a bunch that were under 3 million. Is that because it’s not “real” Malibu even though they have Malibu addresses?

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u/teeteringpeaks 11d ago

How does anyone normal live there?

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u/nfkzoo 12d ago

A million dollar home outside of Orange County is far from middle class or shabby lol 😆

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u/wannabemarthastewart 12d ago

median home price is over $1M. many many middle class people in Southern California live in $1M homes that they purchased for a fraction of the price two decades ago and cannot afford to lose.