Builders Alliance, a nonprofit formed in response to the fires, launched Friday a portal which 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, president of Project Recovery, a group of academics and real estate industry experts who have created a roadmap for recovery.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
Project Recovery’s March report — which was compiled by professors from USC and UCLA real estate schools, along with the Los Angeles chapter of the Urban Land Institute, a nonprofit real estate education and research institute — says an alliance of builders could work together to achieve economies of scale to speed up reconstruction and make it more affordable and predictable.
The web portal is the last stop on the report’s roadmap. It makes it easy for those who have lost their homes to choose from templates and prices from builders who have been vetted Project recovery.
“We are keeping a close eye on the builders,” Horne said. “Buyers get a quality home at a quality price, in a timeframe they can count on.”
Horne is head of the Los Angeles chapter of the Urban Land Institute and president of Southern California real estate brokerage CBRE. Other Project Recovery leaders 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 link their address to home choices, including pre-designed turnkey homes at costs equal to or less than average insurance returns, Horne said. Owners can also opt for 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 community in Altadena, 52 of which burned down, CEO Adrian Foley said.
“Obviously we are devastated by all the losses that have occurred here,” he said. “We wanted to step up and do whatever we could to help.”
Foley said the consortium was designed to allow large and small builders to work together to “acquire the right material costs and purchase plans and specifications that would be attractive to the end user so that we could work together to reduce costs, be more efficient and hopefully achieve a higher percentage of reconstruction.”
The consortium expects to deliver a number of homes in 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 in local zoning regulations and links each parcel to 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.
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