Chamath made the comment while arguing that a short-term “cooling off period” with some protections (like temporary bans on unsolicited low‑ball offers) was justified immediately after the fires, but that over the following 6–12 months normal market dynamics would reassert themselves: “I suspect that in six months and nine months and twelve months, the free market will sort all of these things out … It can allow the free market to work in a few months from now. We’re only talking 90 days.” (podcasts.happyscribe.com)

Since then, California has maintained and in some cases extended substantial emergency controls:

• Executive Order N‑4‑25 extended price‑gouging limits (generally a 10% cap over pre‑emergency prices) on building materials, storage, construction and related services in Los Angeles County all the way to January 7, 2026. (gov.ca.gov)
• Separate executive orders and alerts extended hotel/rental price‑gouging protections and rent caps into March–July 2025, and barred unsolicited undervalued real‑estate offers in affected ZIP codes until July 1, 2025. (gov.ca.gov)
• Six to ten months after the fires, officials were still reporting significant issues: widespread rent‑gouging complaints, removed listings, scams by unlicensed contractors, long delays in debris removal and rebuilding, and even litigation over wildfire‑related insurance surcharges. (sfchronicle.com)

This evidence suggests that, as of late November 2025 (roughly 10 months post‑fires), market conditions and policy responses have not yet clearly “sorted everything out,” and key price controls will certainly still be in force at least until January 7, 2026. However, Chamath’s own timeframe explicitly includes the 12‑month mark and the user’s normalized phrasing (“by early 2026”) extends slightly beyond the current date, so we have not yet observed the full horizon of the prediction. In addition, his claim is qualitative (“sort all of these things out”) and partly about how a freer market would behave, which is hard to falsify while substantial controls remain in place. For these reasons, it is premature to label the prediction definitively right or wrong, so the fairest status is inconclusive (too early).