Earthquakes as jolting reminders: Many SoCal property owners have not completed retrofits

The strong earthquakes that rumbled across Southern California last week rekindled concerns about whether property owners, homeowners and landlords are prepared enough for a potential catastrophic quake.

Many owners of at-risk properties in Los Angeles have not completed

mandated earthquake retrofits on those buildings, and just 12 percent of Californians have earthquake insurance coverage, according to the Los Angeles Times.

The quakes over the July 4th holiday weekend were centered in a rural area northeast of the city, near Ridgecrest. Thursday’s 6.4 magnitude quake was followed on Friday by one that measured 7.1 magnitude. It was only the second time since 1922 that a quake greater than a magnitude 6 was followed by one even stronger.

As of January, only 1,500 of the nearly 13,000 vulnerable buildings in the city have completed retrofits since officials started mandating them in 2015.

Work has started on around half of all those buildings, but owners of 5,000 properties haven’t submitted retrofitting plans. Property owners have until 2040 to do so.

Property owners in many cities across the metro area say the costs to retrofit are too high to take on by themselves. Some have decided to sell their buildings instead of retrofit. West Hollywood city officials last fall barred landlords from using a rent surcharge to pass the costs along to tenants. [LAT] — Dennis Lynch

About Us

Real Estate and Business Veteran, Gordon Myers founded Soft Story Advisors out of the real need he witnessed daily, in the field.

Building Owners are stressed and concerned with hiring the best contractor and/or engineer to comply with various city ordinances because they know that a bad decision can be a very expensive and painful experience.

Licensed as a Realtor in 1988, Gordon has been actively buying, selling, developing, managing and investing in real estate and can easily recognize a one-sided deal vs. a good, fair one!

He immediately recognized the opportunity and foresaw the chaos when the Ordinance came out, requiring that approx. 12,500 city-identified, multi-family dwellings do the necessary work to support their “soft story,” buildings to better withstand a significant earthquake.

Lessons were learned from Northridge in 1994, and again in Mexico in 2017, providing evidence that Soft Story Buildings are more likely to collapse with any lateral movement during a strong earthquake.

 

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