The ash hadn’t yet settled on thousands of destroyed homes when eagle-eyed tenant advocates started noticing the massive rent increases posted on a popular real estate website.
Within days of the historic fires in Los Angeles County, advocates began tracking listings for rental housing on Zillow that raised asking rents far above the 10% limit under California’s law banning post-disaster price gouging.
Now, after weeks of combing through listings (more below on the methodology), a group of volunteer rent gouging investigators has released their analysis, which they say is evidence of widespread illegal activity.
The study’s findings
Calling themselves The Rent Brigade, the group released a study Monday with their findings:
- Between Jan. 7 and Jan. 18, a total of 1,343 listings on Zillow appear to have violated the state’s price gouging ban.
- Those listings appear to have collectively sought to illegally overcharge tenants by $7.7 million per month, or $92.4 million per year.
- Rent hikes outside of legal limits were steeper on the lower end of L.A.’s housing market. The bottom quartile of listings by price saw a 46% median rent increase compared with a 27% increase in the top quartile. [Keep in mind that 10% is the post-disaster cap.]
- ZIP codes in areas including West Hollywood, Malibu and Venice had the most listings that appear to be over legal limits. But lower-income neighborhoods like Koreatown and Vermont Square also had high numbers of listings.
- Of the 1,343 listings analyzed, the study’s authors said Compass had 58 listings that appear to exceed legal increases, the most of any single real estate brokerage.
In her day job, Chelsea…
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