Zillow Removes Climate Risk Data from U.S. Real Estate Listings

Online real estate listings website Zillow has stopped posting climate risk data, after real estate agents claimed the information was affecting sales.

Zillow, the biggest site of its kind in the United States, began publishing climate risk ratings last year, the New York Times reports.

“The scores aimed to quantify each home’s risk from floods, wildfires, wind, extreme heat, and poor air quality,” the Times writes. “But real estate agents complained they hurt sales. Some homeowners protested the scores and found there was no way to challenge the ratings.”

Zillow suspended the listings after a complaint from the California Regional Multiple Listing Service (CRMLS), but is still providing links to First Street, the risk modelling firm that provides the ratings.

“The development highlights a growing tension within the real estate industry,” the Times says. “Fires, floods, and other disasters are posing more risks to homes as the planet warms, but forecasting exactly which houses are most vulnerable—and might sell for less—has proved fraught.”

First Street models have shown that millions more properties are at risk of flooding than government estimates suggest. Without the data, founder and CEO Matthew Eby warned that many buyers will be “flying blind” in an era of worsening extreme weather impacts.

“The risk doesn’t go away; it just moves from a pre-purchase decision into a post-purchase liability,” Eby told the Guardian. “Families discover after a flood that they should have purchased flood insurance, or discover after the sale that wildfire insurance is unaffordable or unavailable in their area.”

That means “access to accurate risk information before a purchase isn’t just helpful,” he added. “It’s essential to protecting consumers and preventing lifelong financial consequences.”

The Times cites research by real estate listing service Redfin that showed users searching for lower-risk sites when they were presented with data on the potential for flooding. A working paper published in November found that the added information reduced sale prices by about 1% for 8,150 properties in high-risk areas.

“Zillow’s own research has found that homes with high fire and flood risk scores were less likely to sell than homes with medium or low scores, though it did not attribute the sales trends to the climate risk scores,” the news story states.

But CRMLS is challenging the accuracy of Zillow’s risk models. “When we saw entire neighbourhoods with a 50% probability of the home flooding this year and a 99% probability of the home flooding in the next five years, especially in areas that haven’t flooded in the last 40 to 50 years, we grew very suspicious,” said CEO Art Carter.

Eby said the First Street models are “built on transparent, peer-reviewed science” and available for public review, and have been validated by major banks, U.S. government agencies, insurance companies, and engineering firms, the Times writes.