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Rebuild applications
Eighteen months in, the Palisades rebuild has moved from paperwork to construction — and the questions have changed with it. This guide is the walkthrough we give our own neighbors: what your insurance actually provides, where to live while you build, how to decide between rebuilding and moving on, and how to get from a cleared lot to your own front door. No product pitch. Just the steps, in order, with the numbers as they stand today.
Nearly every homeowners policy carries Additional Living Expenses (ALE) coverage — the provision that pays for housing, meals, and daily costs while you cannot live at home. Eighteen months in, the urgent ALE questions are different: how much remains, when it expires, and whether your carrier has extended it. California law entitles wildfire victims to no less than 24 months of ALE, extendable to 36 for delays outside your control — if you ask, in writing. If you have not requested your complete policy file and a written accounting of remaining benefits, do that this week.
Underinsured or uninsured families still have working routes: federal assistance, state housing programs, and the nonprofit networks that have stayed active in the recovery. And if your dwelling coverage falls short of replacement cost — the most common gap we see — read our plain-numbers walkthrough of what a rebuild really costs before accepting any settlement figure.
The right interim housing depends on how long your rebuild will honestly take. Rentals suit multi-year timelines; extended-stay arrangements bridge short gaps. And under the City's emergency orders, temporary dwellings — including an RV or a modular unit on your own lot — remain permitted during reconstruction, which keeps you close to the work and your neighborhood intact.
Two rules regardless of the form: confirm your insurer approves the arrangement in writing before you commit, and keep every receipt — ALE reimbursement runs on documentation.
This is the most personal decision in the whole process, and the honest answer is that both paths are legitimate. Rebuilding keeps your community, your schools, and your lot's long-term value — and California's like-for-like provisions give fire rebuilds an expedited permit lane that ordinary projects never see. It also asks two to three years of your life and real financial engineering. Selling the lot and relocating resolves faster and caps your risk — at the price of leaving the neighborhood that made the house worth having.
What we tell friends: make the decision with numbers, not fatigue. Get a real replacement-cost estimate, a real read on your lot's as-is value, and a real permit-lane assessment before choosing. Our guides to what the rebuild actually requires and the first ninety days lay out the rebuild side in full.
The obligations on a destroyed home do not pause: the mortgage is secured by the land and survives the structure, and your insurance must stay active for claims to keep paying. Missed payments risk foreclosure, credit damage, and lapsed coverage at the worst possible moment. If payments have become hard to carry, call your lender and your carrier before missing one — forbearance programs and premium accommodations exist, but they are negotiated, not automatic.
Fair settlements are built from records: a room-by-room inventory with values, photos and video of the loss, receipts recovered from banks and retailers, professional repair estimates, and a running log of every additional living expense. Organize it, back it up, and follow up in writing — and if the claim stalls or the numbers feel wrong, a licensed public adjuster or the Department of Insurance mediation program exists for exactly that moment.
For high-quality residential construction on the Westside in 2026, hard costs are running $450 to $650 per square foot, with fully bespoke coastal work moving past $1,000. A 3,000-square-foot rebuild at the middle of that range is $1.35M–$1.95M of construction alone. Design, engineering, permitting, and soils work typically add 15–25% on top, and site work varies more than any other category — carry a 10–15% contingency. Our journal article What It Really Costs to Rebuild walks the full picture in plain numbers.
Design and engineering take months, not weeks. Permitting depends on whether your project rides the expedited like-for-like lane. Construction of a custom coastal home runs on the order of two to three years from groundbreaking — our own completed projects have run twenty-six to thirty months of build time. Anyone quoting dramatically less is describing a different house, or a different level of honesty.
Often not on the dwelling line alone — many families are finding dwelling coverage falls short of true replacement cost, sometimes by hundreds of thousands of dollars. Two other provisions matter: code-upgrade coverage pays the difference between the house you had and the one today's fire code requires, and Additional Living Expenses (ALE) funds housing while you build — California law entitles wildfire victims to no less than 24 months of ALE, extendable to 36 for delays outside your control, if you ask in writing. Get a formal, line-by-line replacement-cost estimate before accepting any settlement figure.
Chapter 7A of California's building code governs construction in the WUI, and in practice it means the home defends itself against embers: a Class A roof assembly, ember-resistant vents with mesh openings no larger than an eighth of an inch, dual-pane tempered glazing, fire-rated exterior doors, ignition-resistant or fire-treated siding, sealed foundation skirting, and interior sprinklers. These assemblies cost more than their conventional equivalents — that gap is exactly what code-upgrade coverage exists to pay. See our fire-resistant construction standard for the full system-by-system tour.
No — but the like-for-like definition decides your permit lane. Rebuilds that stay within it move through an expedited review lane that ordinary projects never see; a larger footprint or a second story that wasn't there can move parts of the project into full review, which can cost a year. Make that choice deliberately, with the trade-offs on the table, before the drawings are finished.
As of July 2026: more than 1,600 rebuild permit applications submitted, roughly 1,088 permits issued, about 905 homes under construction, and 27 families home — per the community-run Pali Rebuild Map. Debris removal is complete across the burn area; the bottleneck has moved from permits to execution.
Pacific Coast Design Group has built in the Palisades and Malibu since 1995. Our office burned in the January 2025 fire alongside our neighbors' homes — some of which we built the first time. We rebuild the way we always have: open books, a guaranteed maximum price, and fire-resistant construction engineered into every assembly, not bolted on.
See how a rebuild actually unfolds on our North Almar work-in-progress story — a like-for-like Palisades rebuild documented from the first cut of the pad — or start with how we work.
Reading about it is a start. Standing on the site with us is better. When you're ready to talk about your project — or just your questions — we're here.
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