Ryan Serhant Describes An Exodus From LA To New York For Home Seekers. Will The East Coast Pick Up The Slack?

“This is the final straw,” Serhant Realty CEO and Owning Manhattan TV Star Ryan Serhant said on Fox Business News, quoting potential clients looking to relocate from wildfire-ravaged LA to New York.

“First, we started getting calls from agents saying, ‘Hey, we have clients who are looking to evacuate. They are thinking about coming to the east coast.' We started facilitating rentals. Those were about to turn into purchases immediately. They are coming to Connecticut, New Jersey, Long Island – The Hamptons, New York City and across Florida.” 

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The Churchillian quote, “Never let a good crisis go to waste,” is often repeated in real estate circles. However, it would be harsh to think that even the most mercenary East Coast real estate professional could be anticipating the uptick in business in the wake of the LA Fires. However, for those who can afford it, it would appear that the East Coast’s luxury market is about to experience an increase in LA transplants. 

Enough Is Enough

Serhant made a salient point: The LA Fires and the lack of homeowner’s insurance are causing many homeowners to say enough is enough.

“They couldn’t get insurance before this,” the TV star said. “I think you had 65,000 homeowners lose insurance in this general area before this disaster. But it’s the same thing on the east coast. Try to get flood insurance in Brooklyn. You can’t do it anymore.”

Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara issued a mandatory moratorium on Thursday that prohibited insurance companies from terminating coverage in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood and the area outside Pasadena affected by the Eaton fire until Jan. 7, 2026.

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An Exodus Had Been Brewing

Realtor.com reported that the final straw Serhant spoke about had been brewing for a while, starting during the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 and continuing into last year, according to figures from some of the nation’s major moving companies such as U-Haul, Atlas Van Lines and United Van Lines. Recent data showed that more people were leaving California than moving to it. 

The Entertainment Industry Presses Pause

Should the entertainment industry decide to decamp from LA in light of the wildfires, either to New York or Atlanta, where many major studios film due to lucrative tax breaks, the effect could be devastating. Salon.com reports that huge productions have been shut down and awards-related activities have been put on hold. The real issue, however, might be if the thousands of staff who run productions cannot find housing. 

“The industry in the town is so fragile that every little thing becomes a bigger bump in the road,” documentary producer Kourtney Gleason told the LA Times. “Another bump that will push things back from getting ramped up.”

“A lot of the below-the-line workers were already under an incredible amount of pressure,” Kevin Klowden, executive director of the Milken Finance Institute, said in the same article. “For Hollywood workers, it becomes one more blow.”

Only a few cities have a ready talent pool, executive infrastructure and luxury housing to support the entertainment industry while LA gets back on its feet. However, many people cannot afford to simply pick up and move. According to a YouGov poll released on X, only 33% of Americans said they could afford to leave their homes if forced to evacuate.

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Price Gouging Makes LA Even More Unaffordable

For others, the issue has become that rental housing in LA has become prohibitively expensive in the wake of the fires, despite an anti-gouging law which is now in effect prohibiting landlords from raising rents more than 10%.

“Our inventory was already scarce,” Robin Walpert, a realtor with Sotheby’s International Realty, said on CNN. "Within 48 hours, it was quite competitive and pretty chaotic,” she said, quoting a rate of 25 potential tenants for each home. “People are trying to find housing that doesn’t exist at the scale we need. Alternatively, we have had a price-gouging problem that is putting our regular families that don’t have that kind of budget in a terrible situation. Aside from it being illegal, it makes me feel really gross.”

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