That one fact changes where your permit goes, who reviews it, and how long it takes. Here is how the process actually runs.
Talk it through with usAltadena is unincorporated Los Angeles County. It has no city hall of its own. Building permits are issued by the County, and land-use approvals come from the County Department of Regional Planning. Nothing goes through LADBS, the City of Los Angeles building department.
Applications are filed through EPIC-LA, the County's electronic permitting and inspection portal, which takes submissions around the clock. You can also file in person.
County rebuild consultants, Public Health, the Assessor's office and the Economic Opportunity job center are in that building, along with a Southern California Edison planner and SoCalGas by virtual appointment. You can settle in one morning what otherwise takes weeks of phone calls.
If your lot is inside the City of Pasadena, it works differently. Pasadena is its own city, with its own Planning & Community Development Department, its own permit counter and its own fire-rebuild fee program. The first thing we check is which side of the line your lot is on.
The County has set up several ways to move a rebuild through review faster: a Unified Permit that rolls several approvals into one submission, a Bundled Projects pilot that groups neighboring rebuilds for coordinated review, and LA County eCheck, an automated pre-submission plan screen operating in selected Altadena zones.
We will tell you which of these your lot qualifies for. How long your permit and your build take depends on your lot, your plans and your insurer, so we give you a schedule once we have seen all three — not before.
Executive Order N-4-25, signed on January 12, 2025, suspended CEQA and the Coastal Act for rebuilding property destroyed by the Eaton Fire and the other January 2025 fires — provided the new structure sits in the same location and does not exceed 110% of the original footprint and height.
That 10% is the most valuable margin in your whole project. Stay inside it and you keep the fast track. Step outside it — a bigger footprint, an extra story, a moved building pad — and you are into full review.
Sometimes exceeding it is still the right decision. But it should be a decision you make with the cost in front of you, not one you discover afterwards. We price both versions so you can see the difference before you commit.
Chapter 7A of the California Building Code — "Materials and Construction Methods for Exterior Wildfire Exposure" — applies to new construction in Wildland-Urban Interface areas and Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zones. Your rebuild must meet it regardless of what your original house was built with.
It targets the parts of a house that embers actually attack: the roof, eaves, vents, exterior walls, windows, decking and gutters. In practice the large items are Class A roofing, ember-resistant vents at every penetration, dual-pane tempered glazing and certified exterior decking.
Cost: it depends on the house. The roof, windows, vents and decking drive it, and a single number quoted without seeing your plans is a guess. We price it from your actual drawings.
This is not new to us. We live in a Wildland-Urban Interface area and we build in one.
Fountaingrove is WUI. So is Bennett Valley, where Anatoliy lives now. Every post-fire project we have built in Sonoma County was built to comply with it — the same chapter of the same state code that governs your lot in Altadena.
We have specified the Class A assemblies, argued about vents with inspectors, and learned which products pass and which ones hold a job up for three weeks while you wait. You are not paying us to learn Chapter 7A on your house.
For the length of your project we live near the job, not 400 miles from it. After the Tubbs Fire, contractors came into Santa Rosa from all over and stayed for as long as the work took. That is how rebuilding gets done, and it is how we will work in Altadena.
You get a builder who is on your lot every day, not one who visits.
We will tell you which pathway your rebuild qualifies for, what Chapter 7A will cost on your plans, and what a realistic schedule looks like for your lot. The first site walk is free.