Choosing the Right Home Is Tough. Climate Change Is Making It Harder.

Trying to buy a home comes with a seemingly endless list of things to consider: What’s the commute to work like? Can you qualify for a mortgage? Will the small kitchen drive you crazy? 

But climate change is throwing a snag in one of the most important considerations during the home-buying process—location. With catastrophic wildfires, hurricanes and sea-level rise climbing, experts are urging prospective homebuyers to take regional climate risks into account before settling down somewhere with a 30-year mortgage. 

In recent years, real estate and rental marketplaces have started to show these dangers on home listings to equip buyers with basic climate-threat information. However, one of the most popular marketplaces recently took down its climate scores following pushback from the housing industry, which claims the data is unreliable and negatively impacts the market, as Inside Climate News fellow Claire Barber reported. 

Now companies, researchers and some states are stepping in to fill gaps. A slew of resources remain available for people to tap as they try to avoid the worst of future climate impacts.

Buyer Beware: One of the hard truths to accept early on in the search for a new home is that there are no climate havens, experts say. Research shows that climate impacts touch every corner of the world, from the remote Arctic to the bustling streets of New York City. 

But that doesn’t mean every region faces the same type or degree of risk, so it is possible to find areas that are less likely to be pummeled by a hurricane or scorched by a wildfire, said Jesse Gourevitch, an economist at the nonprofit Environmental Defense Fund. 

“As a homebuyer, the key is trying to access information about those relative risks and then decide how to make trade-offs with that information relative to all the other criteria that a homebuyer might be considering,” he told me. 

Not all states require sellers or their agents to disclose the weather-related damage a property has incurred upfront, but prospective buyers can ask directly or poke around the neighborhood for folks willing to share intel. 

You can also do your own research. This is an understandably intimidating prospect for many homebuyers, who are already dealing with securing loans and figuring out the convoluted rules associated with homeowners’ association membership. Tools exist that can help, though take them with a grain of salt. 

For example, the Federal Emergency Management Agency maintains flood hazard maps that show risks across the nation by county. However, an NBC News investigation found that around 75 percent of FEMA flood maps are outdated, so you may want to look at additional sources. 

Last March, The New York Times published a comprehensive guide to home buying in an era of rapid climate change, which points to many of the publicly available—and mostly free—resources a person can use to assess local climate risks. Yale Climate Connections also published a list in 2023 of 30 tools to assess flooding risk across the United States. Other tools can help assess wildfire risk; Heatmap points to a free app called Open Climate Risk, launched Tuesday by nonprofit research group CarbonPlan. 

Floods are among the costliest weather events in the U.S., topping $179 billion in damages annually. Though this risk may not always be reflected in home prices, it’s certain to be revealed if you try to secure insurance in a flood-prone area such as Florida and Louisiana, which have seen skyrocketing premiums in recent decades, as my colleague Amy Green reported. Similar insurance issues arise in areas that are vulnerable to wildfires. 

Even if home insurance pricing is affordable to you now, that could change in the future. Benjamin Keys, a professor of real estate at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, told The New York Times that a prospective homebuyer should consider whether they can still afford the property if insurance premiums double or triple. But Gourevitch pointed out that insurance costs aren’t rising at the same rate across states, counties or even neighborhoods, so a homeowner won’t necessarily face that level of added expense. 

Analysis Paralysis: In 2024, online marketplace Zillow added climate risk data from the modeling company First Street to its platform in an effort to provide “a clearer understanding of potential hazards,” according to a press release from the company. 

“Healthy markets are ones where buyers and sellers have access to all relevant data for their decisions,” Skylar Olsen, the chief economist at Zillow at the time, said in a statement then. “As concerns about flooding, extreme temperatures and wildfires grow—and what that might mean for future insurance costs—this tool also helps agents inform their clients in discussing climate risk, insurance and long-term affordability.”

Just over a year later, the site pulled the information. This came after complaints from sellers and the real estate industry that the feature was arbitrary and hurting home sales, ICN reported last month. In a statement, the company said it “updated our climate risk product experience to adhere to varying MLS [multiple-listing service] requirements and maintain a consistent experience for all consumers.” First Street defended its methodology and data, which the Zillow website still links to without prominently featuring. 

Other sites, like Homes.com, Redfin and Realtor.com, still spotlight First Street climate risk analysis. As ICN’s Barber reported, a climate expert in California is working on a plugin that will automatically display data on wildfire and flood risk, sea level rise and extreme heat exposure on Zillow listings in the state. Meanwhile, the ​​Connecticut Insurance Department launched a feature on its website that shows numerical ratings of a property’s past climate damage and future risks, E&E News reports. 

But the Zillow situation shows the reckoning the housing market faces as climate risks rise. A new report from First Street estimates that human-driven warming could cause a $1.47 trillion reduction in real estate value over the next three decades. And that’s not even adjusted for inflation. 

Research shows that displaying climate information is having a tangible impact on homebuyers’ decisions, to the market’s detriment. But the increase in climate data with varying methodologies could result in conflicting risk findings—even for the same area, Bloomberg reports. This can be confusing for consumers and problematic for sellers whose homes are flagged as risky on some platforms, Gourevitch said. 

“Whether, in fact, this [risk information] is a net positive for society fundamentally depends on that question about the quality of that information,” he said. “It is critical, I think, from a public policy perspective, that there is very thorough and rigorous evaluation of the quality and credibility of that information.” 

So what is a prospective homeowner to do about this information overload? The simplest approach: Get a degree in risk management and analytics. 

Just kidding (even though it might feel that way at this point). Here is Gourevitch’s advice:

“Try to look at as many different sources of information as possible. And if they’re all telling you the same thing, then that can give you a more comprehensive picture.”

More Top Climate News

The Trump administration is planning this week to rescind the science-backed 2009 determination that greenhouse gas emissions harm human health and the environment, Meridith McGraw and Benoît Morenne report for The Wall Street Journal. The “endangerment finding” provides the legal basis for regulating six climate-warming greenhouse gases, and repealing it will hamstring the federal government’s ability to enforce emissions standards for industries like the automotive and electricity sector. It also restricts the use of the Clean Air Act to address climate change. Environmental groups have pledged to challenge the move, but the administration could potentially decline to enforce regulations while these legal battles play out. 

Tribes across the Northern Plains of the United States that secured funding through the Biden-era Solar for All initiative are struggling to secure reliable energy after President Donald Trump cut the program, Ilana Newman reports for The Daily Yonder and Mother Jones. Electricity costs are soaring across the rural U.S., so tribes celebrated the prospect of solar build-outs as a method to secure energy sovereignty. However, many of these efforts have stalled, as ICN reporter Jake Bolster also covered in August.

At the Super Bowl on Sunday, musician Bad Bunny performed a show dedicated to Puerto Rican culture. His show spotlighted many nods to the region—from the sugar cane field set to a tiny recreation of a piragua stand (Puerto Rican shaved ice). But as Canary Media’s Maria Gallucci reports, the performance also showed a darker side of Puerto Rican history: its crumbling energy infrastructure. In 2017, Hurricanes Irma and Maria almost wiped out the island’s energy system, causing one of the most widespread blackouts in history. Puerto Rico is still rebuilding and fortifying its grid—as represented by the sparking power lines in Bad Bunny’s show—but funding cuts by the Trump administration have slowed the process. 

Postcard From … Alabama

This week’s installment of “Postcards From” comes from Lee Hedgepeth, one of Inside Climate News’ two Alabama reporters. He recently stopped by the Salamander Festival in Homewood, a suburb of Birmingham. It’s the first time the community festival has been held since residents secured a victory for a local spotted salamander population that had been put at risk by a proposed development.

“Homewood’s spotted salamanders migrate to their vernal pools to mate during the first warm rains of the year,” he said. “Every year, residents work together to block the road from traffic, allowing the critters to cross the road safely. It’s become a Homewood tradition.”

Today’s Climate readers, we want to feature your photos from nature, whether you are in a city, suburb, forest or anywhere in between. Please send your photos to [email protected].