A year after historic blaze, newly built homes are selling again in Altadena

PLC Communities is relying on marketing, price cuts to sell 18 residences

PLC Communities was set to break ground on a model home for its new Altadena, California, community a week after the Eaton fire. (PLC Communities)

Key takeaways

• Southern California developer PLC Communities has completed eight of 18 planned homes in Altadena’s fire‑damaged La Viña neighborhood and sold six so far.
• The team invested more in marketing and lowered prices to attract buyers to the still-recovering town.
• Rebuilding in Altadena is gaining momentum, a signal to buyers that the community is stabilizing.

When the team at PLC Communities took on a project to build 18 new homes in the gated La Viña community in Altadena, California, in 2024, they thought their biggest challenge would be winning neighborhood approval — not a deadly fire that burned more than 14,000 acres of land.

A year before the Eaton Fire, however, the development team was hard at work to ensure their planned homes would be welcomed to the neighborhood. They met with residents and homeowner's associations "to market it without really upsetting the apple cart too much," Jaime Todd, the developer's vice president of marketing and sales, told Homes.com News in an interview.

"We knew that it was a big deal to really ingratiate ourselves and really meet and make nice with that whole community," Todd said.

It took about a year of planning and meetings, but by January 2025, they were ready to start building a model home for their community, known as Encore. That's when a new challenge arose: their neighborhood was hit by the Eaton blaze.

"We were sitting in our office when the fire happened," Todd said. "We're watching the news coverage and we see our tract. You could see clear as day, our 18-home little street. The house right above it on fire, the house right below it on fire."

More than a year later, eight of the 18 planned homes at Encore have been completed, and six have already sold.

Six of the eight completed homes at Encore have already sold, according to Jaime Todd. (PLC Communities)

The residences range in size, spanning from just over 3,100 square feet to more than 4,000 square feet. Buyers can choose plans with three to five bedrooms and three-and-a-half to five-and-a-half bathrooms. Homes are equipped with smart technology and indoor-outdoor living amenities.

The PLC team has also taken on 24 rebuilds in the La Viña neighborhood, all of which are expected to be move-in ready before Halloween this year.

It's the latest sign that recovery is underway in Altadena, known as a close-knit community in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains, Todd said.

"It almost feels like it's the 'Wizard of Oz' scene," he said. "Like, come on out. It's safe now. You're out of the woods."

Attracting new buyers to a fire-ravaged neighborhood
The Eaton Fire destroyed 5,600 single-family houses, 261 multifamily units, 161,000 square feet of retail space and 38,000 square feet of offices, according to officials and data from CoStar, Homes.com's commercial real estate affiliate.

In La Viña, more than 50 of the 220 homes in the neighborhood were destroyed — and that number doesn't include homes that were just affected by the blaze, according to Todd.

Though the PLC team had to deal only with minor landscaping damage and the loss of a few materials, their bigger challenge was attracting buyers.

To access the community means driving through the winding streets of Altadena, many of which were completely razed in the fire. That meant that whenever a prospective client visited the Encore model home, they were first greeted with the remains of the catastrophe.

Some of Altadena's core retail and commercial anchors have yet to return to the town after last year's fire. (Moira Ritter/Homes.com)

"It wasn't only like, oh gosh, that's right, there was a fire. It was, oh my gosh, this looks like a bombed-out city," Todd said. "It was so in their face that it was impossible to get around."

It's a challenge that other communities affected by last year's firestorm have faced as well. In Pacific Palisades, the coastal neighborhood devastated by the Palisades Fire last January, developers are facing a similar predicament: building new homes next to vacant, charred lots.

Homebuilder Thomas James Homes, for example, received a certificate of occupancy for its model home at 915 Kagawa St. in November. While the home represents what's to come for the neighborhood, CEO Jaime Mead said there's a tension between matching residential development and the recovery of broader infrastructure.

"We can build back quickly," Mead said at an event in December, "but again, we don't want to put people in a house without a place to go for groceries."

Using more marketing and lower prices to sell new Altadena homes Todd said the first anniversary of the Eaton Fire on Jan. 7 was a sort of turning point.

Though his team has still had to work to talk people through their emotions — primarily the fear of moving to a fire-devastated town — they've already sold six of the eight completed homes. All but one of those sales have been to buyers who are not displaced by the fire. Instead, buyers are coming from a 5 to 10-mile radius, relocating from places like Glendale and Burbank, he said.

Homes at Encore feature higher-end amenities and typically attract older, wealthier buyers, Todd said. (PLC Communities)

To reach that milestone required a different approach to selling the homes, according to Todd, who said his team put about five times the "resources, outreach and dollar amount" into marketing Encore than a typical new home community. More than that, the homes in Encore are selling for about 20% less than they would have before the fire, between about $2 million and $2.3 million.

"If there never were a fire event, I think I'd be sold out and I would have sold the homes for about 20% more than I am now," Todd said. "Every single one of our buyers have absolutely made it really clear that in their mind — and then I think that they're absolutely correct — can't believe they're getting this house for this price."

Other developers have made progress, too. Genesis Builders — a collaboration between Southern California builders Cityview and Montage Development — broke ground on a rebuild project on Tuesday. Local nonprofit Steadfast LA and modular homebuilder Samara delivered their first of nine donated factory-built homes to Altadena. That momentum has helped PLC sell its newly built homes, Todd said.

"The biggest thing that's helped us, that started really driving sales, is the time factor," he said. "The community is rebuilding and revitalizing. And now that we've had some people that have finally kind of decided to move forward and seeing the opportunity, it's kind of like, oh, it's safe. Sales breed sales."

Posted In Altadena, Eaton Fire, La Viña