"These things lead to a change in value and risk to this huge asset that you as a consumer are buying and whether or not people are proactively asking for it, we believe it is a responsibility to let them know," said Mr. Berkowitz said.
The risk of climate-related damage is higher for some population groups. An Allstate survey on disaster risk reduction found that women are more likely than men to have difficulty recovering financially from a natural disaster. Minority families and low-income households are also more likely to live in areas at risk of climate-related damage, and decades of racist housing policies in the United States have created temperature inequality, moving black homeowners to neighborhoods with higher and lower temperatures.
With this in mind, Enterprise Community Partners, a national not-for-profit housing association, developed Portfolio Protect, a tool that provides risk assessment for hazards such as earthquakes, floods and landslides. It's free and available to any address in the country.
There are more in-depth resources out there for those willing to pay a fee. CoreLogic, a property data company as well as city and state scores, provides detailed risk reports with data from mineralogists, climate scientists, engineers and statisticians. Their clients include FEMA, as well as insurance companies and mortgage service providers, and reports start at $ 18.
"We provide risk assessments on a composite level to give you a complete picture of how vulnerable your home is to natural hazards," said Tom Larsen, director of insurance and space solutions at CoreLogic. “The first step is to know your risk now. It's granular. It's at the house level, "added," It won't hit every house the same. "
As awareness of climate-related hazards grows, companies that break those hazards down into easy-to-understand predictions are becoming increasingly popular, said Zach Aarons, co-founder of MetaProp, a PropTech venture capital company.
“You see pictures of people in their kayaks in the middle of the street on Twitter, or you see photos of a sky over San Francisco that looks like the sky on Mars,” he said. "This is a market that will continue to develop."
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