When Zillow, the country’s largest real estate site, added information to property listings last year disclosing flood, wildfire, heat and air-quality risks, it was following its own research: More than 80 percent of home shoppers consider climate risk in their decisions. The data allowed families to weigh these risks before signing a mortgage.
Last month, the scores disappeared from the listings.
The real estate brokers and agents behind the California Regional Multiple Listing Service, one of the largest housing databases in the country, had complained about Zillow’s climate scores. Zillow partly depends on C.R.M.L.S. to supply its listings, and it removed them from every home on the site.
C.R.M.L.S. and a few homeowners told The Times they questioned the validity of property-level forecasts, and C.R.M.L.S. said it grew “suspicious” when models showed high flood risk in places that hadn’t flooded in decades. But when Fast Company asked the listing service for an example, it pointed to a neighborhood in Huntington Beach — one that, in fact, flooded just recently. Zillow’s climate-risk scores came from First Street, a research firm whose flood and wildfire models have repeatedly outperformed the government maps that many Americans mistakenly assume are definitive. After the Altadena wildfire in January, a Los Angeles Times investigation found that state hazard maps flagged only about 21 percent of the homes that burned. First Street’s models identified 94 percent.
C.R.M.L.S.’s real objection to including the data on Zillow is apparently less scientific than financial: Climate-risk scores might lower listing prices, which affect what real estate agents earn. But suppressing verified risk information is dangerous. When buyers can’t see the risks up front, they may take on more exposure than they can afford — homes that become too expensive to insure, with costs families didn’t anticipate, and, worst of all, natural disasters they hadn’t yet thought of in personal terms.
Climate change has always been a battle on two fronts: physical and informational. The physical impacts are unmistakable — extreme heat, stronger hurricanes, deadlier wildfires, chronic flooding. But the informational battle has been intense, as well, with decades of deliberate efforts to cast doubt on settled science and remove it from public view. Now the “information war” has come to real estate, where the consequences of unknown risk can be particularly severe.
Before Zillow, Redfin, Realtor.com and Homes.com started including climate risk information, most people had little way of knowing whether a property would be in harm’s way or not. About a quarter of states have no flood disclosure laws, and the federal government has said its own data is insufficient for fully assessing flood risk. Indeed, over 40 percent of flood-insurance claims made between 2017 and 2019 occurred outside its designated high-risk zones or areas that were not yet mapped, and about 75 percent of U.S. flood maps are outdated.
In West Virginia, for example, a staggering 30 percent of properties face major flood risk, according to First Street, and yet sellers are not required to inform buyers about flood history or proximity to a flood zone. This means buyers could learn the truth only after the water rises, and after they’ve signed a 30-year mortgage. In many states, even homes that flood again and again can be patched up and sold to the next unsuspecting family.
The financial fallout of all this is growing. Insurance premiums have soared in vulnerable regions like wildfire-prone Colorado — with median premiums up 74 percent since 2020. In some counties around the country, major insurers have withdrawn entirely. Buyers are often blindsided, learning only after closing that their insurance will double, triple or disappear. And as insurance prices rise, home values often fall. In areas like Lafitte, La., home values have dropped by 38 percent since 2020, and it’s becoming harder and harder to sell, The Times found.
For home sellers and buyers in such high-risk zones, the difficult reality is that climate risks need to be both conspicuous and priced into listings. Consumers can insist that climate-risk scores return to Zillow, and in the meantime, use the platforms that still provide them, like Redfin, Realtor.com and Homes.com. Those companies are facing similar pressure from C.R.M.L.S., and hearing from buyers now matters.
States can also strengthen disclosure laws so that a home’s flood or wildfire risk isn’t something buyers discover only after a disaster. As Susan Crawford, a climate adaptation scholar and writer, suggests, the government should fully fund a modernized flood mapping program that shows not only today’s risk, but how flooding is expected to change. Finally, real-estate platforms must stop fighting the facts and start preparing people for the dangers that already exist.
Climate change is showing up as a material impact on more and more lives. The question now is whether Americans will be allowed to know the truth about it and make informed decisions to protect their financial security.
John Marshall is the C.E.O. and founder of the Potential Energy Coalition, a nonprofit marketing firm focused on climate change.
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