[daviddennis]

The real question in my mind is whether living in a gorgeous natural setting and having a better life every day is worth the once in a decade risk of having your house burn down.

In all honesty, I would say it probably is, because you're living among beauty instead of a boring, humdrum "normal" place.

Whoever told him those areas are cheap, though, must have been smoking something rather strange. The cheapest listing in Topanga Canyon right now - a one bedroom, one bath house - is listed at $469,000.

If you tossed a match out of your car driving down Topanga's main drag, you'd probably burn the whole place down.

Somehow the risk of fire doesn't seem to affect market value. At all.

I would still much rather live in Topanga Canyon than any other place in LA save Malibu -- and it's comparable to Topanga in fire risk.

D

[Carry_Okie]

Beauty is indeed an economic asset, offest by the liability of risk to capital. Pay for the latter in your insurance and care for the former and both are optimized. Without discriminatory pricing by behavior and individual choice and the market cannot resolve relative risk and the owner is not motivated to manage the risk.

Blame the insurers who, rather than hire the expertise to assess individual risk, just pool everybody because they can get away with it. That is a result of the lack of competition resulting from State regulation that acts to protect the insurers from making stupid decisions themselves.

Remember how they jacked everybody's fire insurance after losing out in the Northridge earthquake?