Zillow Doesn’t Care If Climate Change Destroys Your New Home

Will we be safer living inland, away from coastal storms? What about forest fires? Should we have children, and if so, how many? Can we handle old age in a flooding basement, or at the end of a dirt road? What if everywhere we love is dangerous?

When we try to plan our lives rationally, the climate crisis stymies us at every turn. There are already so many other factors to consider—where can we find community and work? Where can we afford to live?—and useful information can be hard to come by. Zillow, the real estate listings platform, just made matters worse. In October, The New York Times recently reported, the company ceased publishing climate risk with its listings. The listings platform had only begun this potentially helpful practice last year, using data from First Street, a risk-modeling firm.

For homeowners, failing to consider climate risks could be catastrophic—in fact, it already is. Almost half the homes in the United States are at serious risk from the climate crisis, whether due to flooding, wildfires, hurricanes, heat, or bad air quality. Adding to the problem, while potential homebuyers struggle to obtain data to guide their decisions, the insurance industry does not suffer from challenges of this kind. Insurers are making rational decisions in their own interests, leaving homeowners with insurmountable costs, or even uninsured. State Farm canceled 72,000 home insurance policies last year

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