27 LA Rebuilds Have No General Contractor

I pull every residential rebuild permit the City of Los Angeles issues in the fire areas, then open the permit record itself to find out who is on the job. Not a scrape, and not a list bought from anybody — the records, one at a time, by hand.

Here is what 104 of them say right now.

How many LA rebuilds have actually started?

Of the 104 rebuild permits issued, 99 show no inspection activity on record.

That wants saying carefully, because it is the number people get wrong. It does not mean nothing is happening on those lots. A crew can be on site, a fence can be up and material can be delivered before the first inspection is ever called. What it means is that the city has not yet recorded an inspection against the permit — so the trades that trigger those inspections have, for the most part, not been engaged.

A permit is a homeowner saying they intend to build. An inspection is the first sign that anyone actually is.

How many have no general contractor?

This is the finding that surprised me most. On 27 permits the record names no general contractor at all — the owner pulled the permit themselves. Eighteen of those are in the Palisades.

California allows this. Under the owner-builder provision a homeowner can pull their own permit and hire the trades directly, rather than engaging a general contractor to run the job.

What it means in practice: on those 27 jobs there is no contractor standing between a trade and the person writing the checks. Every trade is open, and the owner is the one choosing.

Who is building in the Palisades?

On the remaining permits the record names 66 separate general contractors. Ten of those hold more than one rebuild, and one holds three.

For a subcontractor that is the more useful fact. A general contractor running three rebuilds in the same neighborhood needs framing three times, roofing three times and plumbing three times — and would rather call one person who did the first one well than go looking twice more.

Who sequences the work when there is no contractor?

Usually the architect. 42 of the 104 permits name an architect of record. On an owner-builder job there is no general contractor ordering the trades, so somebody has to, and it tends to be whoever drew the plans. That makes the architect closer to being the customer than a gatekeeper — and in a market rebuilding thousands of homes at once, they are short of reliable trades rather than besieged by them.

Are the owners living there?

Mostly not, which is unsurprising after a fire but worth seeing as a number.

Where the owner receives mail	Permits
Elsewhere in the LA area	56
Same area as the property	43
Out of state	3
Not established	2

Fifty-nine of these owners are managing a rebuild from somewhere else. They need somebody on the ground more than they need the lowest bid.

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How this was compiled, and what it is not

I am setting this out plainly, because it is the part that matters.

• The source is the city’s own permit records. Every figure above comes from the issued permit and the record attached to it. Permit records are public.
• The contractor of record was looked up by hand, one permit at a time. The city’s permit detail pages are not available in bulk, so there is no shortcut. I called LA Building and Safety, they showed me where the contractor, engineer and architect of record appear, and I worked through them.
• Declared values are declared. A permit valuation is what the applicant filed, and people file low because the permit fee is calculated from it. Treat every value as a floor, not an estimate.
• “No inspection activity” is not “no work.” See above. It is the most commonly misread figure in rebuild coverage.
• This is not a prediction. It is what the records said on the date below, and I update it as new permits are issued.

Last updated 16 October 2026.

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If you want the jobs rather than the numbers

Every permit above is on the project board, with the trades still unclaimed and the ones that have no general contractor marked.

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