A small but growing number of older people are taking climate change into account when choosing a retirement destination, real estate agents and other experts say. Armed with climate studies, many retirees are looking for communities that are less likely to experience extreme weather events, such as wildfires, drought and flooding.
In an analysis of nearly 1.4 million home sales along Florida’s coasts, for example, University of Pennsylvania researchers found that the sales volume of homes in areas where 70 percent of developed land was less than six feet above sea level dropped by up to 20 percent between 2013 and 2018, while sales rose on less-vulnerable coastal land. Prices on homes in riskier areas declined between 2018 and 2020.
The lead researcher, Benjamin Keys, a professor of real estate and finance at the university’s Wharton School, said the biggest sales declines occurred in Florida coastal communities where retirees from the Northeast — particularly those who lived in counties exposed to Hurricane Sandy in 2012 — tended to move.
Extreme weather can be particularly dangerous, and even deadly, for the elderly, who are more likely to have chronic medical conditions and disabilities, according to numerous studies.
Three-quarters of residents who died in the 2018 Camp Fire, which destroyed the Northern California community of Paradise, were 65 and older. Well over half of the record-high 323 people who died from heat-related causes in Arizona’s Maricopa County in 2020 were at least 50. And two-thirds of the people who died in Florida during Hurricane Ian in September were 60 and older.
The kind of data the Hoaglands used to search for a new destination is readily available online. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association’s Climate.gov includes links to trend data on floods, wildfires, drought, wind, disease and other climate hazards.
Prospective home buyers can also check out individual properties. Risk Factor provides data on anticipated wildfire, flooding and extreme heat risks for 145 million properties in the United States over the next 30 years.
Each property is ranked for each type of risk on a scale from 1 (minimal) to 10 (extreme). The online tool provides a percentage likelihood of the risk occurring over time — for example, that floodwaters could reach your house in the next five or 10 years or that the community could experience a certain number of 100-degree days. (ClimateCheck also provides property-specific risk data on heat, drought, fire, flood and storm.)
Redfin, Realtor.com and several other real estate firms are including Risk Factor climate projections with each listing.
The data appears to be changing the behavior of many home buyers. According to a Redfin analysis released in September, the company’s users who had viewed listings that scored at severe or extreme flood risk instead bid on homes with 54 percent less risk. The website’s users who did not have access to the data were more likely to bid on high-risk homes.
“This is the best evidence that people do respond to climate change risks when they are presented with the information,” said Daryl Fairweather, Redfin’s chief economist.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/18/business/where-to-retire-climate-change.html