A real estate agent in La Cañada is the first person to be charged with price gouging after the Los Angeles fires.

A law barring monthly rents of more than $10,000 for new listings is stopping high-end homes from going on the market, real estate agents and brokers say. Such homes could be in demand for wealthy fire victims.

“just a quick scan of zillow reveals a few egregious instances of price gouging by landlords and agents. this is illegal,” someone else noted, highlighting one listing that was originally priced at $7,500 per month in late October and as of Jan. 11, went up to $11,000.

The emergency law caps rents to a ‘fair market value’ determined by HUD, but the caps are so low that many high-end homeowners are delaying putting

Within the week since Los Angeles’s worst-ever disaster began, rent gouging has become a crisis on top of the crisis. It’s against the law to increase a rental price by more than 10 percent once a state of emergency has been declared;

Because California is in a state of emergency, laws targeting price-gouging, including a ban on landlords raising rents by more than 10 percent of pre-emergency levels, should be

About 1,600 policies for Pacific Palisades homeowners were dropped by State Farm in July, the state insurance office says.

Tenant advocacy groups, landlord associations and elected officials are condemning rent gouging after tens of thousands of people were displaced in deadly fires this month.

The ongoing disaster will affect residents’ health, local industries, public budgets and the cost of housing for years to come.

Redfin chief executive Glenn Kelman said one of his agents lost her home to the fires that tore through Los Angeles. She found a home for rent, listed at $5,600 a month, he said. But when she called, the landlord had nearly doubled the price to $11,000 a month. So she drove down the southern California coast to search for a hotel in Orange County.

With inventory reduced and fire risk increased, both home prices and insurance rates could rise in Southern California.

Rent for single-family homes across Los Angeles County rose by almost 25 percent, and even more in certain areas, according to a Washington Post analysis.