Our Fires and Our Real Estate Market & Values

If you live in Southern California, you’ve almost certainly seen & breathed the smoke. You probably know someone who’s been evacuated.

Certainly our thoughts and prayers are with the evacuees, and especially those who have lost their businesses or houses, but not their homes.

We’ve already been asked how this will affect the local real estate market. For areas that haven’t burned, not that much. Over the short term, the fires should result in a tighter rental market, especially in San Diego County, which appears to have the most homes lost.

Value wise, fire-prone locations will take a hit for several years, and the areas that actually burned will take an even greater hit. That may result in a modest bump (or at least a slower decline) in less fire prone areas. Overall, any more modest negative from a national perspective will be more than offset by the additonal construction jobs created.

Of course, we’ve experienced fires before, but I can’t remember this many in so many different areas all at once. A foreseeable that could have been prevented if federal forest service bureaucrats could only connect the dots. (For an excellent editorial about that in the OC Register, click here: http://ocregister.com/opinion/planes-fires-fire-1902825-california-tanker

When people get too hung up on material things, a friend of mine likes to help them keep perspective by saying, “It’s all going to burn.” After cleaning out my Mom’s home when she moved into a senior community, I concluded “It’s all going to end up in a landfill.”

Hopefully these fires can serve as a reminder to all of us to be thankful for what we have, and to put our time and energy into God & people, not things that will not last.