Property taxes in California do not reset to market value automatically each year. Proposition 13, adopted by California voters in 1978, limits how quickly assessed values rise while a property stays in the same hands. But when ownership changes, that protection generally does not transfer to the new owner. The assessor reassesses the property at… Read more »
Sixteen Months Later, More Than Four in Five Destroyed Homes Still Have No Rebuild Permit More than a year after the Palisades and Eaton fires destroyed over 16,000 homes and structures across Los Angeles, the rebuilding process has stalled in ways that the public narrative around permitting reform hasn’t fully captured. By January 2026,… Read more »
Your Home Is Gone. Your Insurer Paid Less Than It Cost to Rebuild. And No One Told You About This. When the Palisades and Eaton fires tore through Los Angeles in January 2025, they destroyed more than 16,000 structures, killed at least 31 people, and left thousands of families facing the most disorienting kind… Read more »
A $23,420 Fee to Build a Retirement Home, With No Way to Fight It In 2016, an engineering contractor named George Sheetz bought a modest parcel of rural land in El Dorado County. He was planning for retirement. The idea was simple: place a small manufactured home on the lot, somewhere quiet for him, his… Read more »
