Home values increasingly depend on how vulnerable the property is to climate change. Attom Data's finds that low-risk homes appreciated 17.2 percent higher than high-risk homes.
Homebuyers are beginning to take risk for flooding, hurricane, and wildfire damage into greater account than before, especially as more Americans experience such natural disasters. Harvard University's Jesse Keenan, who teaches with a focus on the relationship between housing and climate change, explains to Bloomberg, “People have actually observed these phenomena. There’s been a lot of recent experience.” University of Colorado professor Asaf Bernstein, who studies the relationship between sea-level rise and home price depreciation concludes that whether or not home values are affected by other climate risks is not a question of if, it's a question of when.
Even as President Donald Trump downplays the importance of climate change, there are signs that Americans may be taking it more seriously—at least when it comes to buying a house ... “Natural disaster risk is certainly not the only factor consumers are considering when buying a home,” said Daren Blomquist, Attom Data’s senior vice president for communications. But he said the figures provide “some evidence real estate consumers are responding to natural disaster risk, albeit somewhat erratically.”