After years of uncertainty, Rancho Palos Verdes’ landslide buyout program is officially moving forward. The city has finalized more than $54 million in federal funding through FEMA to purchase homes in the Greater Portuguese Bend Landslide Area that were damaged by the land movement that accelerated in 2023 and 2024. (Some early headlines put the figure at $56 million; the city’s official number is over $54 million.)
Who is included
Twenty-seven homes have been selected for purchase: 22 in the first round and 5 in a second round. The city received 85 applications in the fall of 2024 and prioritized homes based on structural damage and red/yellow tagging, loss of utilities, and proximity to the most active land movement.
How the buyout works
- Homes are purchased at their pre-disaster fair market value — what the home was worth before the landslide damage.
- FEMA covers 75% of eligible costs; the remaining 25% is deducted from the seller’s proceeds at closing.
- Purchased homes will be demolished, and the land permanently deed-restricted to open space. These properties will not come back on the market.
- Because the grants reimburse the city, purchases will happen in small groups over time — this will play out over a few years, not all at once.
A third round of roughly $19 million, covering about 8 more homes, has been applied for and is currently waitlisted. Homeowners who were not selected in the first two rounds do not advance unless that additional funding comes through.
What it means for the local market
For the wider South Bay, the direct market impact is modest — 27 homes leaving the housing stock will not move prices on their own, and because the parcels become permanent open space, no new inventory will replace them. The bigger effect is local: for homeowners in and around Portuguese Bend, the buyouts remove the most severely damaged properties from the neighborhood, and land movement will remain an important disclosure and due-diligence topic for any sale in the area.
If you own a home near the landslide area and are wondering what this means for your property, we are happy to talk it through.
— Rosetree Real Estate
Information from the City of Rancho Palos Verdes’ Voluntary Property Buyout Program.
