Zillow adds climate risk scores to property listings

When Leslie Watson and her husband were searching for their first house in the San Francisco Bay Area, they had a few priorities. They wanted an enclosed backyard for a dog and a spare room for playing video games. Also on the wish list: low climate risk.

“The main thing that I was the most concerned about was the flooding, because there are a lot of creeks that run through the area,” Watson said.

Watson is especially aware of the risks. She’s a high school science teacher whose classes address the climate crisis. 

“My opinion is, if you’re looking for a home now and you’re not considering climate risks, you’re not really very in touch with what is happening,” she said. 

Home buyers now have more tools to assess those risks. This month, Zillow, the country’s largest real estate search platform, announced it’s adding information about climate hazards, and how they might grow over time, to all of its property listings. Users will be able to scroll down to see a risk score for flooding, wind, wildfire, extreme heat and air quality, along with insurance recommendations to protect against related losses.

“There is a rising need for a buyer to have this information when they approach the market, and honestly a seller, in order to appropriately understand how to price and list their building,” said Skylar Olsen, Zillow’s chief economist. 

In a recent customer survey, the company found that more than 80% of potential home buyers said they consider climate risk in their decisions. More than half of new listings on Zillow are at risk of extreme heat, Olsen said. Meanwhile, 17% face major wildfire risk and 13% major flooding risk — risks scientists say will continue to grow as average global temperatures rise.

The data comes from First Street, a climate risk modeling company, which also provides its risk scores to Redfin, Realtor.com and Homes.com.

First Street founder Matthew Eby said home shoppers can now also get detailed reports from the company, showing how insurance prices and availability might change over time.

“That’s really what’s impacting consumers these days,” Eby said. “It’s the most visual and dollars-and-cents way that people are realizing the impact of climate change.”

On average, the price of homeowners insurance rose by more than a third between 2020 and 2023, and by more than half in high-risk areas, according to research by Benjamin Keys at the Wharton School.

“Insurance is an annual contract, and oftentimes home buyers would think that whatever they paid last year is what they’ll pay next year,” Keys said. “What we’ve seen over these last few years is that’s simply not the case.”

Models aren’t perfect at predicting where those costs will go, Keys said, but even a rough idea will help home buyers make better decisions about what — and where — they can afford.

“That would have been very nice to have when I was house hunting this year,” Watson said. 

She and her husband ended up buying a place in San Leandro, California, and they did pretty well with the information they did have.

According to Zillow’s newly added climate information, their house faces minimal flood and fire risk — one out of ten, according to First Street’s scale. The biggest risk was air quality — seven out of ten — but that didn’t surprise Watson. They’re near an industrial area and the Oakland airport. 

“Places that we could afford were generally like this one,” she said.