The happy new owner of the Pacific Palisades home where Matthew Perry died in October 2023 said she was glad to hear that the house escaped the deadly wildfires that burned through the wealthy Los Angeles neighborhood.
Anita Verma-Lallian, a real estate developer, bought the four-bedroom, five-bathroom home in a deal that happened outside of the public market for $8.55 million, almost a year to the day after the “Friends” star died. In the end, she said she was going to use it as a vacation home for her family, who live in Scottsdale, Arizona.
Verma-Lallian and her family spent the New Year at the house, but just a few days after they got back to Arizona, one of the wildfires that has since spread to more than 27,000 acres destroyed the neighborhood where the house is located.
Live maps of the fire’s spread showed that the street where the house is located was completely engulfed in flames. Verma-Lallian wrote on Instagram that she had no idea if the property had survived and was relying on information from her neighbors and national news coverage to find out what was going on.
Officially speaking to Realtor.com®, the developer and movie producer said that the house amazingly survived the terrible fire, with only minor damage in the backyard. She also praised her “amazing” community for helping to save the property.
Someone from our group was able to check on the house and let us know that it is safe, she says. The firefighters were able to put out a couple of small fires in the backyard with water. We’re just hope that they stay out of the house. But our house is fine for now.
The neighborhood has been great and very friendly. Most of the people we’ve met have gone out of their way to make us feel welcome. People who live nearby have checked on the house for us and sent us reports on what’s going on, which has been very helpful.
Before neighbors told her that the house had survived the terrible fires that have already killed five people and burned more than 2,000 buildings, Verma-Lallian says she felt “helpless” as she had to watch from afar as her new neighborhood went up in flames.
“We just bought a house in Pacific Palisades as a second home or vacation home.” “We went there for the holidays and got back to Arizona on Sunday,” she says. “It wasn’t until Tuesday afternoon, January 7, that we learned about the fires.” Our neighbors began texting us about it.
“The fires were right next to us; our security cameras showed that the smoke and flames were getting into our pool.” We could see that the fire department was on our street, and they had about five or six fire cars.
“We saw firefighters put out some fires, but then our service went out, and we had no idea what was going on.”
“I felt so helpless because I had no idea what was going on and couldn’t do anything about it.” We couldn’t even get local news; we were only able to watch national news, which didn’t tell us what happened to the house.
She is the CEO and founder of two businesses, Camelback Productions and Arizona Land Consulting. Verma-Lallian says the Palisades fires scared her even more because she thought the area wasn’t likely to have wildfires.
“As far as we knew, there hadn’t been many fires in Pacific Palisades,” she said. “Malibu looked like a bigger risk.” We were sure we were safe, even though I knew some places in the L.A. area had become more dangerous.
She says, “It’s been a lot.” This is not something I ever thought would happen. It’s been crazy, and I’ve felt a lot of different things.
Verma-Lallian knows that the house is still standing, but she says there are still a lot of things she doesn’t know. For example, she doesn’t know when she will be able to go back to the property because her neighbors told her it could be up to a week before they could go back and check on the damage.
She says, “We’re not sure when we can go back.” “We’ll get back to the house as soon as we can by taking a plane.” Our friends, on the other hand, have been told that it might not happen for up to a week.
Even though Verma-Lallian can’t go back to her new home yet, she is quick to praise the community that surrounds it. She points out how many neighbors and friends have come together to help her family.
She says, “Everyone loves living in the Palisades; it’s such a beautiful place to live and such a great community. It’s terrible that we have to go through this.” “We have gotten so much help from each other it’s breathtaking.” People have been giving each other messages to let them know what’s going on at each other’s homes.
“After hearing that my friend’s house in Malibu didn’t make it, she went to check on mine to make sure everything was okay.” That’s why people who have lost loved ones are still going out of their way to help others.
At the time of publication, the Pacific Palisades Fire, one of five that are currently burning in the Los Angeles area, had spread to more than 17,000 acres and had no chance of being contained. The Eaton Fire, which started hours later, had also spread to more than 10,000 acres and had no chance of being contained, according to Cal Fire.
Since then, three more fires have started, including the Sunset Fire in the Hollywood Hills, which CBS News reports is a “very dangerous and explosive” brush fire.
The Hurst Fire and the Lidia Fire, two of the later fires, are now partly contained, firefighters said on January 9.
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