When Disaster Called, L.A.’s Realtor-Influencers Were Ready
Armed with industry knowledge and online followings, brokers are helping those displaced by the wildfires. For some, it’s meant confronting "the market knows best."
Armed with industry knowledge and online followings, brokers are helping those displaced by the wildfires. For some, it’s meant confronting "the market knows best."
The cadaver dogs were just beginning to sniff through the burnt ruins when a TMZ paparazzo caught celebrity realtor Josh Altman for his take on the "all-American town" of Pacific Palisades. "People are already trying to sell their dirt," said the former Million Dollar Listing Los Angeles star. That same day, Altman joined Chris Cuomo’s prime-time show on NewsNation
(which claims to target "moderate" viewers and features many so-called "Ghosts of Cable News Past") to try to put into words the scope of devastation he’s seen in Malibu, Palisades, and Altadena after the Palisades and Eaton fires: "For people watching around the world and seeing this, I’m telling you, it’s 100 times worse."
Altman, like many of his fellow luxury brokers with reality TV celebrity status, seized the national stage accordingly, grabbing airtime on news networks to translate breathless legalese into headline-grabbing sound bites and treating their social feeds as information hubs for next steps like navigating insurance. They’ve pooled resources and clout to promote their messages on how Los Angeles will (and should) rebuild in this post-disaster housing market. Their phones haven’t stopped ringing and likely won’t for months, if not years.
Because L.A. is the center of the influencer industry, its celebrity agents are among many Extremely Online Realtors who have temporarily pivoted their skills—and social media presence—to aid in wildfire recovery. No group was more primed to meet this moment than today’s realtor-influencers—a blueprint drawn from a decade’s worth of popular real estate reality TV that reached new heights during the pandemic and carved out a new breed of celebrity, fueling the relatively recent rise of real estate TikTokers.
From the jump, celebrity real estate agents sprung into action in front of the camera and offline to join forces for immediate relief to wildfire victims. Mauricio Umansky, The Agency cofounder and CEO featured on the now-cancelled Buying Beverly Hills, put out calls on Instagram for emergency donations to his pop-up relief center, where he was also able to collect Starlink satellites for emergency medical workers. "In many ways, right now, real estate agents are also first responders," he told the New York Times. "You have firemen and policemen, but what’s the next step? It’s us, the people who help people find new homes." Elsewhere on Instagram, BBH cast member Ben Belack has been breaking down the laws for landlords during a declared state of emergency. Tracy Tutor of Million Dollar Listing Los Angeles, and Selling Sunset’s Chrishell Stause posted federal and local disaster resource infographics to their feeds and Stories.
But underlying all this assistance has been politics, and the value systems held by each broker, who always stands to make more money as the market goes up. Tutor and Altman’s costar Josh Flagg told Fox Business that if billionaire developer Rick Caruso had won against Mayor Karen Bass, "this would never have happened." Flagg also suggested that the apocalyptic ruins of the Pacific Palisades and Altadena were "sad to say, going to affect the real estate market in a positive way," causing housing and rental prices to skyrocket. Selling Sunset star broker Jason Oppenheim had a more surprising take, given his stance on L.A.’s "mansion tax," Measure ULA (a transfer tax placed on L.A. real estate selling for more than $5 million, passed in 2022 with the aim of raising funds to help address the city’s housing crisis), which he called a "death blow to high-end real estate" before it went into effect the next year. Two days after the fires erupted, the Oppenheim Group founder posted an Instagram video saying that his firm would represent displaced L.A. residents for free. He also sounded the alarm on landlords for illegally price-gouging properties in the city’s upturned housing market during interviews with BBC and CNN. "I’m all for free market dynamics but not after a natural disaster," he told CNN. "This is not the time to be profiting." (This coincided with the viral spreadsheet tracking rental hikes after the fires—organized by Chelsea Kirk, the tenants’ rights organizer behind the Instagram account @bad_tenant—that became something of a scarlet letter for L.A. landlords.)
These celebrity brokers proved to be de facto talking heads for market predictions and recovery. A week after the fires, Oppenheim and Belack, along with nearly 50 top market figureheads, called on California lawmakers to double the state’s $3 million Fair Plan Insurance coverage, pause property taxes for impacted homes, and ease regulations that could hinder rebuilding. They also advocated for the suspension of the "mansion tax" on destroyed properties. "Currently this insane tax erases profit, so no one builds here," Belack wrote to naysayers on Instagram. "We have to encourage them to return."
While the city’s power luxury brokers focus on recovery at the policy level, a slew of other more "micro" realtor-influencers have similarly pivoted their established online platforms to share market knowledge and resources in the aftermath of the destruction. Realtor Nicole Reber—whose colorful hair and fashion play just as big a role in her online presence as the L.A. properties she posts about—shared a Google Doc link with listings for displaced Angelenos in an Instagram Story that read: "Furnished focused (some unfurnished too) list of homes for those displaced…at all price points—please contact me directly…."
Husband-and-wife team Brock and Lori Harris created a similar Google Doc compiling furnished leases around the city as they were evacuating their own home. They’ve been working round-the-clock since. "In the past two hours, I’ve referred an interior designer, a lawyer, an insurer, and a lender," says Lori, who estimated the couple has advised hundreds of people who lost their homes in the Palisades and Eaton fires. Their Instagram distills hard truths about disaster recovery and insurance claims as tidy and artfully as their staged listings and slick podcast clips. "People are being thrust into the Los Angeles real estate rental market who maybe haven’t experienced it in a couple decades," Brock adds. "There’s a lot of sticker shock."
Local realtor Teresa Fuller, who saw her commercial property burn to the ground in Altadena, where her house and office still stand but are damaged from smoke and soot, has found her highest and best use in funneling "the fire hose of information" online into digestible posts on issues like debris removal services or tax reassessment. Her online PSAs draw from the Gen Z content creator’s playbook with mic’d up, captioned, and highly produced video content. "There’s so much noise out there, so those of us who have a craft have to stay in our lanes on social media and try and interpret this crazy fire hose of information," she says.
Others appealed to the city’s cultural legacies lost. Benjamin Kahle, a realtor who also oversees the historic ordinance in unincorporated L.A. County, rallied Instagram for preservation-minded architects to help reconstruct residents’ old Craftsman homes, Tudors, and midcentury moderns as they were, affordably, and "save Altadena from white-box flipper hell." He pointed to postwar Case Study Houses as an example for building attractive architecture with simple, economical materials. Jenna Cooper, whose Instagram bio reads, "the original design-driven real estate agent," transformed her West Hollywood boutique store called +COOP into a free fire relief pop-up (which the likes of Sharon Stone and Halle Berry shared with their millions of followers).
To be sure, advertising and media courtship has always been in the realtor’s tool kit. Like any good salesperson, they’re selling themselves as much as the home. The profession’s proximity to Hollywood only compounds this effect. The realtor’s role is more than transactional today; it’s identity- and media-driven, highly exclusive and personal, and more powerful than those tasked with rebuilding "L.A. 2.0"—the public officials, architects, and urban planners—might care to admit.
The past month has borne witness to how precarious owning property is in Los Angeles, how thin the line between housed and unhoused is, and how the chasm between the haves and have-nots widens with each disaster. After the pandemic and the Hollywood strikes, the L.A. fires arrive at a terrifying flashpoint for the city’s housing shortage and homelessness crisis. The spirit of mutual aid and pro bono goodwill from across industries stand at the heart of the city’s grit and redemption. But for the skeptical among us, the line between philanthropy and good PR no longer exists, and those loudest after the wildfires are the same who stand to profit in the long run—whether they’re willing to reckon with that or not.
Top photos courtesy: @nicolereber/Instagram, @brockandlori/Instagram, @historic_realestate_la/Instagram, @teresafullerrealestate/Instagram, @thejoseprats/Instagram
Related Reading:
