LA landlords: are you ready for El Niño?

Question

Forecasters are saying this could be one of the strongest El Niños on record for Southern California. For those of you with rentals in the LA area, what are you doing to get ready, if anything?

Roof inspections? Gutters? Talking to tenants? Reviewing your insurance? Or just waiting to see what happens?

And for anyone who owned property here during the 1997-98 or 2023 storms, what did you learn the hard way?

(Disclosure: I'm a public adjuster in LA, so I'm curious how owners are thinking about this ahead of time.)

Leo Stein · Answer

For SoCal rentals I treat storm season like a short punch list, not a hope cycle: roof/flashing walk or vendor check, gutters and yard drains cleared, weatherstripping on obvious drip points, and a one-page tenant note on how to report a leak (photo + exact location + call/text path). The ops piece that fails in storms is ownership of the after-hours call — who answers, who can authorize a board-up or water-mitigation vendor, and how fast you document for insurance. Review loss-of-rents and water backup / ordinance-law limits before the first atmospheric river, not after. Waiting to "see what happens" is how a $400 gutter cleaning turns into a two-week vacancy and a claim fight.

Richard (Ryszard) Cieplechowicz · Answer

I'd check the gutters and drains before the rain, then tell tenants how to report a leak or standing water right away. The part that gets missed is who takes the call and who follows up when the first person isn't available. A short dated note beats trying to piece it together after the storm.

Isaac P. · Answer

Great list, and the vacant/mid-rehab point deserves extra attention from an insurance angle. A lot of landlord policies limit or exclude certain losses, including water damage, once a property has been vacant for a set period of days depending on the policy. And a standard rental policy may not be the right coverage at all while a property is under renovation. That's usually where a builder's risk or vacant property policy comes in.

So the house with the roof open and windows out could be the one with the least coverage right when the storms hit. Worth a call to your agent before the first big rain, not after.

Also +1 on sewer laterals. That ties right back to the water backup endorsement mentioned earlier. The scope tells you the risk, and the endorsement decides whether you're covered if it happens.

Alev Sharma · Answer

Good thread. Adding a few items from the rehab and acquisitions side, since we walk a lot of older LA houses after heavy rain and the same problems show up over and over:

- Sewer laterals. Older clay or Orangeburg lines with root intrusion are what turn a big storm into a backup inside the unit. A sewer scope is cheap, and so is a cleanout. A backwater valve is worth pricing out on lower-lying properties.

- Grading and drainage. Soil or hardscape sloping toward the foundation, buried downspouts that empty right next to the slab, and clogged area drains in side yards cause more water intrusion than roofs do. Run a hose test on the drains before the first storm, not during it.

- Hillside and canyon properties. Check that slope drains, V-ditches and retaining wall weep holes are clear, and walk the slope above the house, not just the house itself.

- Flat roofs and older additions. Valleys, parapet walls and the seam where an addition ties into the original roof are the usual leak points on Valley and Westside housing stock.

- Properties mid-rehab or vacant. If you have a project with an open roof, windows out, or exterior work in progress, line up tarps and a weather plan with your contractor now, and have someone check it after every storm. A vacant house can take on water for days before anyone notices.

- Paperwork. Take dated photos of the roof, gutters and drains before the season. Combined with the tenant reporting log mentioned above, it helps show the condition was maintained if you ever need to make a claim.

Isaac P. · Answer

Really solid list, and I'm glad you mentioned ordinance or law coverage, because that's the one I see catch owners off guard the most. A lot of LA rentals are older buildings, and when you repair storm damage, the city can require you to bring that section up to current code. That upgrade cost often isn't covered under the base policy, or the limit is way too low for what the work actually costs.

Same with water backup. People assume a backed-up drain or sewer line during a storm is covered like any other water damage, and it often isn't unless you added that endorsement.

Question for the group: has anyone actually pulled their declarations page this year and checked those limits? I'd be curious what people are carrying, especially on older properties.

Isaac P. · Answer

Great point about the dated note. From the claims side, that timeline matters more than most people realize. When a leak turns into a claim, one of the first things the carrier looks at is when the damage started and how quickly the owner acted. If a tenant reported it on day one but nobody responded for a week, that gap can become the carrier's argument that the extra damage wasn't sudden, it was neglect.

A few things I'd add to that note: when the tenant reported it, who responded and when, and photos or video before anything gets cleaned up or moved. Even quick phone pictures with timestamps help a lot.

Curious, do you have a set vendor lined up for water mitigation, or do you find someone when it happens? After big storms those companies get booked up fast.

LA landlords: are you ready for El Niño?

LA landlords: are you ready for El Niño?

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