Will L.A. residents flock to Boise after fires? Will housing prices spike? What agents say
Super Bowl Sunday is coming up on Feb. 9 — and with it, the start of “real estate season,” says the president of Boise Regional Realtors. That’s when the Boise-area housing market usually kicks into high gear.
This year, the market may be in a higher gear than usual. In the aftermath of the wildfires that ravaged parts of Los Angeles, many sellers expect an influx of Southern California residents.
“I have had a lot of sellers anticipate — they’ve said, ‘Oh, all those people are going to come here, so prices are going to go up,’” the president, Elizabeth Hume, told the Idaho Statesman by phone. “Sellers are thinking that. I don’t know that the data is saying that.”
Indeed, local real estate agents provide a murky picture of whether that influx is really materializing. Lysi Bishop, the founder of Lysi Bishop Real Estate, told the Statesman on Jan. 16, nine days into the fires, that her office was already receiving an “uptick” in calls from Los Angeles residents.
“So far, it’s all of our clients who had Boise already on their radar, who were planning on it in the future,” she said. “So we got an immediate call. They haven’t figured out insurance payouts, (but) they’re already saying, ‘We’re moving up our relocation date, we’re going to be coming to Idaho sooner.’”
Those included people in smoke-affected areas, who lost their homes or who saw their neighborhood looted, she said.
But other real estate agents, including Mark Fitzpatrick of Idaho Wild Real Estate, and April Rinehart of Keller Williams, said they haven’t seen a change.
“I have heard from clients in that area that communicate their (frustration) and confusion as to why these fires continue to happen, and that they would like to move, but no one has made the formal commitment to move at this point,” Rinehart told the Statesman by email on Jan. 16. Other agents have told her they hear “rumblings” of more Californians moving to the area, but there’s “nothing solid at this point,” she said.
Bishop emphasized that she was hearing only from a “handful” of people, and that it was too soon to say how many would really buy a home. She and Hume said it can take weeks for fire victims to receive insurance payouts, which inform their decision to buy a new home or move out-of-state.
After Northern California’s Camp Fire in November 2018, which killed more than 80 people in the Paradise area, it took between six and eight weeks for pending sales in the Boise area to spike, Hume said. So if Los Angeles residents do head to Boise, “it may not happen as quickly as people think,” she said.
Still, “to me, that was still fast to have that many calling in,” Bishop said. “Just the fact that we’re getting the outreach from them gives me a good read on the market.”
“Give me six months, and I’ll be able to tell you real numbers of what it actually converts to,” she said.
This story was originally published February 4, 2025 at 4:00 AM.
