Genesis Builders breaks ground on first home as it helps Altadena rebuild

By Isabel Sami – Staff Reporter, L.A. Business First
Feb 25, 2026

Story Highlights

What’s This?

• Genesis Builders breaks ground on its first pre-designed house in Altadena.
• Permitting timelines are faster with pre-approved home designs.
• Houses are up to 2,200 square feet; prices start at $692,900.

A construction excavator shoveled a heap of dirt on an empty lot in Altadena on Tuesday morning. Rebecca Zandovskis stood and watched. Just over a year ago, her house was on that plot of land.

She recalled waking up on the morning of Jan. 8, 2025 — the day after the Eaton Fire began its devastating sweep, claiming her home and thousands of others with it. That morning, she shut her eyes and told herself, “It was all a dream. There’s no way I lost my entire life in one night.”

A few months after the fire, Zandovskis, one of L.A. Business First’s 2026 People to Watch, began the process to rebuild her home with Genesis Builders. She’s senior director of business development at Genesis, a group formed by Cityview and Montage Development after the 2025 Los Angeles wildfires to rebuild Altadena with pre-designed homes.

Genesis broke ground on her new house on Marcheta Street on Tuesday, marking the first of the company’s projects to start construction in the area. Over the next two months, the developer is prepared to break ground on nearly 25 more homes. The firm has more than 30 Altadena clients and is in discussions with many more.

Zandovskis’s two-story, Mediterranean-style home is scheduled for completion by the end of the year, part of the company’s 12-month completion guarantee once construction begins.

“Now I get to wake up every morning and I don’t want to go back to sleep, because it’s no longer a dream. This is my home, and it’s going to be my home again,” Zandovskis said through tears.

Simplifying the rebuilding process

Devang Shah, principal at Genesis, said many people have struggled with an urgency to rebuild but have had difficulty making decisions. That’s why Shah focuses on painting a picture of how Genesis can simplify the rebuilding process when meeting with prospective clients.

“That struggle is real. There’s a burning urgency to get going, because if rebuilding does stagnate, it’ll impact property values,” he said.

Because the homes are pre-designed, each home can undergo faster permitting, completing the process in around 60 days.

L.A. County approved the 24 designs, meaning clients can pick and choose from the company’s six home plans and four architecture styles — Mediterranean, traditional, craftsman and bungalow — while making their own adjustments and customizations, from paint and backsplashes to room layouts. Each home is between 1,250 square feet and 2,200 square feet. Pricing starts at $692,900.

Shah said the company went through a long process to get the plans pre-approved.

“The county was learning alongside us because the pre-approval program didn’t exist, so we were running parallel,” he said. “This is the beginning of many projects to come.”

Zandovskis said the process of building with Genesis has been simple. It gives her more time to focus on her clients rather than her own rebuild. She started the process with Genesis in September and received her permit from the city to break ground in December.

Faster timelines with pre-approval

Over the last year, Anish Saraiya, director of Altadena Recovery in Supervisor Kathryn Barger’s office, has facilitated rebuilding in the community. He said the method of pre-approving home designs began after the fires with developers like Genesis.

“A group like Genesis can take you from start to finish, with set of plans you can pick and choose from,” Saraiya said. “Because they’re pre-approved, they’re not going to be so cumbersome to permit. You take that plan, you adapt it to your site and you have a much quicker process to rebuilding.”

Around 1,000 homes are in the construction process, with around 1,500 permitted, he said.

What worries Saraiya and his colleagues are the thousands of residents who have not started the rebuilding process, generally held back by financial resources.

“Groups like Genesis are potentially an option for somebody who’s $200,000 short, because their costs are significantly less than independent builders,” Saraiya added.

Zandovskis and her husband, Jani, didn’t go into the rebuilding process with much help from insurance. When working with her clients, Zandovskis knows how financial strains can factor into rebuilding.

“A lot of people are going to do what works best for them. They know what they want, and they should move forward with it,” she said. “But for us, just having that certainty of how much things cost is what we needed to work with.”