January’s wildfires in Los Angeles will leave scares. Even those whose homes seem to be structurally sound may actually be hiding severe damage that will only be uncovered as LA begins to recover and rebuild.

Garret Gray, CoreLogic’s President of Global Insurance Solutions is one such case. Following a harrowing race against time to evacuate the threatened area with his family, Garret prioritized safety, not possessions. Miraculously, while nearby homes burned to the ground, his house remained standing.

While at first glance this seems like a small miracle, on the inside, the hidden damage tells a very different story — a story that highlights a significant and often-overlooked cost of wildfires: the massive, unanticipated strain on the insurance industry from homes that appear intact but are uninhabitable. Garret’s home, while structurally sound, was inundated with soot, ash, and toxic smoke particles.

His story is one of many. While the focus must remain on the families who have lost everything, it’s crucial to recognize the hidden costs for those who only experienced partial damage.

Homes like Garret’s reveal a secondary, equally significant layer of loss that will also take years to recover from and may have long-term implications for insurers grappling with claims far more complex than they initially appear.

In this episode of Core Conversations, host Maiclaire Bolton Smith and CoreLogic’s President of Global Insurance Solutions Garret Gray sit down to discuss the emotional and financial toll that these hidden losses can have on families, communities, and the insurance industry.

In This Episode:

2:27 – Listen to Garret Gray’s experience evacuating from the Palisades Fire and how he learned that his house remained standing.

6:50 – Why do wildfires impact some homes and not others even if they are on the same street?

11:22 – Erika Stanley goes over the numbers in the property market with The Sip.

12:33 – What are the hidden costs of wildfires, even for homes that seem to be structurally sound?

16:22 – How will the scale of this disaster – both for complete losses as well as partial losses – impact the insurance industry?

21:24 – How long will it take to rebuild or restore properties in LA where the construction industry is already strained? How are we going to accommodate the demand in materials and the resulting prices?

Up Next: Does Low Wildfire Risk Create a False Sense of Security?

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