Hot real estate these days is also climate resilient
Hot real estate these days is also climate resilient
Eva Davis is a real estate agent in Washington, D.C., and almost every one of her clients these days is asking about climate risks.
“I would say flood risk is definitely the biggest one,” she said. It’s a shift she’s noticed in the last few years as storms have gotten worse.
“And I also think the other piece of it that I’ve really seen — this is more in the last year, like 2024 — has been that homeowners insurance has been harder and harder to get,” Davis noted.
Climate concerns are playing an increasingly large role in house shopping. Nearly 90% of prospective homebuyers say it’s very important to them that the house they buy have at least one climate-resilient feature, according to a new report out from Zillow. And homes are increasingly touting those features: The share of listings that mention having flood barriers, seismic retrofitting or water catchment systems is up about 20% over last year, per Zillow’s data.
Davis and her partners at Compass have all had clients recently who’ve had trouble getting insurance or found that it’s much more expensive than they expected.
“So I think hearing people’s stories — of your friends, your neighbors, your family, you know. It’s just on people’s minds between that and then just the news,” she said, adding that her clients are drawn to listings that mention a house has something like waterproofing in the basement.
Putting that kind of information out there has become a lot more common just in the last year, according to Amanda Pendleton, Zillow’s home trends expert.
“Sellers are, in fact, highlighting features that do offer some degree of protection, and buyers are seeking them out,” she said.
For safety reasons — and because houses that are built to stand up to extreme weather can also be more affordable to maintain and to insure — they might have things like “watertight windows, doors and roofs; wind-resistant doors and windows; fireproof or noncombustible home materials,” Pendleton said.
But even as prospective homebuyers are becoming more concerned about climate risks, Patrick Welch at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy said that it’s rarely the most important factor.
“The cost of housing is still going to be the main characteristic people are looking at when looking for a house,” he said. “These areas that are most at risk are often more affordable than other places.”
Lots of people are moving into areas that have some of the highest climate-related risks, including in Florida, Texas and Arizona.
Most are actually moving from nearby though, not from out of state, per Jeremy Porter at the nonprofit First Street Foundation.
“People want to live in the same metro area, the same county, the same neighborhoods,” he said. “They want to live close to their family. They want to keep the same job.”
They may stay in South Florida but try to move to a safer neighborhood, he said.
“People in high-risk areas from flooding are avoiding parts of their community, where the streets flood whenever there’s a heavy rainfall event, where the basements are known to flood, and they’re moving towards high ground in those areas,” he said.
And when they’re able to, they may be moving into a house that’s been built to better stand up to the risks.
Stories You Might Like
There’s a lot happening in the world. Through it all, Marketplace is here for you.
You rely on Marketplace to break down the world’s events and tell you how it affects you in a fact-based, approachable way. We rely on your financial support to keep making that possible.
Your donation today powers the independent journalism that you rely on. For just $5/month, you can help sustain Marketplace so we can keep reporting on the things that matter to you.
