https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/05/opinion/zillow-redfin-flood-wildfire-risk.html
What Zillow Won’t Tell You
By John Marshall, The New York Times, Dec. 5, 2025
When Zillow, the country’s largest real estate site, added information to property listings last year disclosing flood, wildfire, heat and air-quality risks, it was following its own research: More than 80 percent of home shoppers consider climate risk in their decisions. The data allowed families to weigh these risks before signing a mortgage.
Last month, the scores disappeared from the listings.
The real estate brokers and agents behind the California Regional Multiple Listing Service, one of the largest housing databases in the country, had complained about Zillow’s climate scores….
Zillow’s climate-risk scores came from First Street, a research firm whose flood and wildfire models have repeatedly outperformed the government maps that many Americans mistakenly assume are definitive….
Indeed, over 40 percent of flood-insurance claims made between 2017 and 2019 occurred outside the government’s designated high-risk zones or areas that were not yet mapped, and about 75 percent of U.S. flood maps are outdated….
In some counties around the country, major insurers have withdrawn entirely. Buyers are often blindsided, learning only after closing that their insurance will double, triple or disappear. And as insurance prices rise, home values often fall…. [end quote]
Redfin, Realtor.com and Homes.com still provide climate-risk scores. But they are also under pressure from realtors to drop them.
Floods and wildfires are predicted to increase with climate change. Any home buyer will need to investigate the real risks and also the impact on insurance and resale values.
Wendy