As Pacific Palisades residents clear debris from January’s wildfires, they’re wrestling with the decision to stay and rebuild or sell and move away.
For 38 years, Edward Stark called the northwest corner of Merivale and Lachman Lanes home. His house in Pacific Palisades, Calif., was less than two miles from the coast. It had four bedrooms and three baths with a basketball hoop in the backyard.
Today, after the Palisades fire tore through the neighborhood in January, his home is a burned, rubble-strewn lot. The stairs from the street are still there, but they don’t lead anywhere. Only parts of brick walls and the chimney remain. The basketball hoop is charred and mangled.
So Mr. Stark, 75, came to the same quiet crossroads where thousands of his neighbors had found themselves lately — stay and rebuild or sell and move away. It’s as much a financial decision as an emotional one, as much about real estate as about the future soul of the Palisades.
Mr. Stark, a lawyer, decided to sell, with an asking price of $1,899,000. His was one of nearly 200 burned lots in Pacific Palisades that had gone up for sale in recent weeks. Telling his neighbors his decision was one of the hardest things to do.
“I was almost embarrassed,” he said. “It’s like I gave up.”
The burned lots for sale are a fraction of the more than 3,600 single-family homes that were destroyed in the Palisades fire. But the decisions being made in this early stage of rebuilding offer a glimpse of the challenges and questions facing one of the wealthiest and most scenic enclaves in Los Angeles. As of Friday, 164 lots had been listed for sale, with 19 in escrow and 27 sold since Jan. 7, according to real estate listing data.
For Mr. Stark, the choice came down to the waiting.
