ALTADENA, Calif. — Grandma's newly renovated California house was completely demolished by the deadly Los Angeles wildfires — but she's still on the hook for the $800,000 mortgage she took out to pay for the upgrade.
Miriam Kotero, a 46-year-old Costco worker, had just finished an upgrade — which valued the home at $1.2 million — when the Eaton Fire swept through her neighborhood on Jan. 8.
But because she has not yet upgraded her insurance on the property, where she and her family have lived for years, she said she is only getting $200,000.
“I had insurance,” Kotero told The Post Sunday.
“We went from one bedroom, one bathroom to three bedrooms, two bathrooms and an attached garage. The insurance was not updated to reflect the changes.
We just appraised it, because we refinanced it, and it was appraised at $1.2 million. “We borrowed to rebuild, and the money I owe on the house now is $800,000.”
Kotero said she bet everything on the family home and it went up in smoke, leaving her with a $6,000 mortgage payment and no place to live.
“I feel terrible,” Kotero said.
“I can't find anything.”
Cotero's situation is one example of the greater crisis facing fire victims in California's highly regulated and extremely expensive housing market.
Homeowners who bought years ago have seen the value of their property skyrocket, which discourages them from moving.
Experts say it has also led to many homes being underinsured, after insurance companies pulled out of California markets in large numbers before the wildfires.
Kotero and her three children, ages 17, 22 and 25, were at Disneyland when the fires started, and they rushed home when they saw the news.
They spent a few hours taking what they could, then fled to safety.
They believe the house was invaded just four hours after they left. When they returned on Sunday for the first time, they found nothing but a pile of charred rubble.
“We lost everything, all our memories,” she said.
“I didn't take anything with me, the wind was so strong and the fire was so close that I didn't have time to collect anything before evacuating.”
“I was looking for pictures. I wanted to find at least one picture of my granddaughter, my children, my parents, or paintings of the Virgin Mary that I had had for 20 years or more.
Kotero and her family — three children, plus her partner and granddaughter — are living out of a hotel, but they don't know where they'll go when they check out Wednesday.
Kotero says they can't go far because her oldest son is in the middle of his senior year at Pasadena High School — leaving them stuck paying Los Angeles rent prices until they can get back on their feet.
“Insurance covers $44,000 for rent. But it will take at least two years until we can rebuild our house. I still have to pay a mortgage of $6,000 a month and rent a place to live,” she said.
Mortgage lenders often stop payments in the event of a natural disaster, but even if she got a deferment, Kotero still doesn't know how she would cover the mortgage without the proper insurance.
“$44,000 is not going to cover everything,” she said.
“There is only ashes.”
