See the Harrowing Photos of James & David's $4.5M Listing Devastated by the Getty Fire

On Million Dollar Listing Los Angeles' August 25 episode, James Harris and David Parnes went to see their $4.5M Brentwood listing that had been destroyed by the 2019 Getty fire. 

"This is really bad, Dave" James said. "I've never seen anything like it." Later, David echoed, "I'm kind of in shock right now, to be honest." 

The devastation to the home left James unsure of how to proceed with the listing. "I honestly don't know what the strategy's gonna be here," he admitted. "How do you bring a buyer to a site that has a burned-down structure and an entire hillside that's covered in ash? Honestly, for once I think I'm bloody speechless."

Their developer client, Phillip, was equally stunned, noting, "I've never seen something like this in my 10 years of doing development."

David, who said "it smells like I'm walking on a fireplace," as the trio assessed the damage, firmly stated, "We can't show it like this."

While Phillip explained it could take "up to six months" to "get the demo permits, pull everything out, do the grading, get this nice and flat again, landscape it so it looks nice," David felt the extended time could end up working in their favor. "If it takes six months, it's a good thing," he said. "Because the whole stigma attached to the fire will be further in the past."

Because Phillip invested over $4M in the property and hoped to sell it for $4.5M, James and David felt confident that attempting to sell the property at the time would result in a major loss for their client.

"This is a problem. I don't think that the comps are going to stack up for you right now either," James said. "If I were buying this now and we were going to ask four and a half million, I'd say, 'I'll give you three.' I think anyone that comes here is gonna lowball you."

Ultimately David, James, and Phillip decided to wait six months and see what the market would look like at that time. "There's money in this deal, but it has to be delivered and packaged correctly," James said. "This, it's not correctly."

According to the episode, Phillip later began demolition of the structure and intends to rebuild with his own plans. 

Want more Million Dollar Listing Los Angeles? New episodes air every Tuesday at 9/8c or catch up on this season through the Bravo app.