After the LA fires, finding a contractor to rebuild is no small feat

It’s been a year since the Eaton Fire tore through parts of Los Angeles and destroyed thousands of homes and businesses. And for many people, recovery is a complicated and winding process. Part of that process is picking the right contractor.

“Marketplace Morning Report” host, David Brancaccio, checked in with his neighbor, Dustin Kunkel — who’s in the solar panel business and a father of two. Kunkel spoke to 30 contractors before finding someone to rebuild the house he owned. The following is an edited transcript of their conversation.

Dustin Kunkel: So, we bought our house back in 2018 and we'd been renting it out, kind of planning to move up into it. And our renters, they lost out on a probate house the summer before the fires, and so we let them stay in there. And I don't know if I'm lucky or unlucky.

David Brancaccio: So, what's the plan?

Kunkel: We're gonna move into it once we finish it. But currently, we live in a tiny, little one bedroom with two girls, and they're growing too big for their little dinky room. We're just staking it out a little bit. It's gonna be a couple thousand square foot house and three beds, two baths, and we'll have a back house, ADU, assuming the finances work out.

Brancaccio: Yeah, I mean, you're talking to a guy who's right in the middle of that. I don't know, right? That's the big problem. So, someone has to build this for you. Do you have one guy, went to him, gave you a good price, and then it's all done, and he's going. Is that how it worked?

Kunkel: I wish it was that easy. I kind of had one guy in mind, and I'd called him and he was excited. And then he stopped answering phone calls, you know, about a month or month and a half in. I just, at that point, I didn't necessarily feel all that comfortable going with somebody that wasn't returning my phone calls.

Brancaccio: Don’t blame you. So, where'd you go next?

Kunkel: Yeah, I probably interviewed 20, 30, 40 contractors.

Brancaccio: You interviewed more than two dozen possible contractors. I mean, did you go meet them?

Kunkel: I did. I did video interviewing. I talked with other people, and kind of got some referrals. I just, I think, didn't end up feeling either comfortable working with them, or just didn't feel like their price range was anywhere close to what I feel like the rates should be.

Brancaccio: Did you actually get any formal bids from this giant cluster of possible contractors?

Kunkel: I got a bunch. I mean, at some point people that would give me their price per square foot, I just ended up telling them to go kick rocks and I don't want to talk to them anymore. We ended up going with the Renew Altadena group, and felt like during the interviews, they were mind reading some of the design elements we were wanting. So, kind of built some trust with their expertise.

Brancaccio: Every expert tells me that before the fire, it was about $400 a square foot to build in Southern California. Now we're not going to get that now. Can we get anything close to that? Is that still pie in the sky? Something at that price level?

Kunkel: I've seen a few bids around that price, and I think there's a couple good people out there doing it around that. But I don't know that you're at 400 bucks, but I think maybe 450 I think is probably realistic.

Brancaccio: All right. Well, I'm not gonna hold you to it, but I'm gonna keep my fingers crossed.