If you’re picking out clothes for the following day, you’ll probably glance at the weather forecast. If you’re making weekend plans, it’s often useful to check if the prediction includes rain or snow.
Decisions about our long-term futures, like what house to buy or how to invest in home maintenance, require a lot more information than what we can find with a quick look at an app or the local news. But homebuyers and homeowners can benefit from thinking about the weather — specifically, how the weather will change as the planet continues to warm up, and what impact it can have on their homeownership plans.
What Climate Change Has to Do with Homeownership
Climate change, which is caused by burning fossil fuels like oil and gas, makes certain weather events — including flooding, storms, and heat waves — more intense and more frequent. The U.S. government’s fifth “National Climate Assessment,” released Nov. 14, reported that a disaster costing at least $1 billion in damages now hits the U.S. every three weeks, on average. In the 1980s, billion-dollar disasters (adjusted for inflation) only occurred once every four months, according to the report.
The report also explores the connection between those damages and financial hardship for property owners.
“Climate change has direct and indirect effects on economic outcomes,” the Assessment’s chapter on economics reads. “Changes in rainfall patterns and sea level rise put existing homes at risk of flooding, a direct effect. Elevated flood risk in turn causes indirect effects, including lowering home prices, increasing risks to mortgage-providing businesses, and altering the cost of flood insurance provided by the Federal Government.”
Nationally, more than 80% of prospective homebuyers consider at least one climate-related factor while shopping, according to a study released by Zillow earlier this fall.
The DMV is Relatively Climate Safe, Compared to Other Regions
Compared with many other parts of the country, the D.C. region is on the safer side when it comes to climate risks, at least in the immediate future. It’s not close enough to the coast for sea level rise to start swallowing whole blocks, as will likely happen in places like Miami. And the mid-Atlantic is unlikely, in the near term, to experience the devastating wildfires and extreme drought that the West Coast faces (though the DMV has actually experienced moderate drought conditions during much of 2023, and Shenandoah National Park saw multiple wildfires this fall).
Augurisk, a risk assessment platform specializing in crime and natural disaster data, lists both D.C. and Prince George’s County as being low-risk for natural disasters. But that doesn’t mean homebuyers and homeowners in the DMV should forget about climate change impacts. Risks vary widely across the region, particularly when it comes to flooding.
D.C.’s Flood and Heat Risks Are Not Evenly Spread
Some areas, like Ivy City or Rhode Island Avenue NE near the Brentwood metro stop, consistently experience flood issues during heavy rain even though they’re not technically in the floodplains mapped by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. In the coming years, our region will see even more of the heavy rainfall events that cause that type of flooding.
The District also has about 720 single-family homes in FEMA’s defined 100- and 500-year floodplains, according to the D.C. Department of Energy and the Environment. About 98% of all the homes in the 100-year floodplain — an area with an estimated 1 in 100 chance of flooding in any given year — are in Wards 7 and 8. Around the country, neighborhoods with a history of racist red-lining face about 25% more flood risk than other areas, according to a 2021 study from Redfin.
Similar trends exist when it comes to high temperatures, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Predominantly Black neighborhoods are far more likely than whiter neighborhoods to experience the heat island effect, which causes some areas to experience higher temperatures because they have lots of concrete buildings and pavement and fewer trees and green spaces. In D.C. in the summer, the hottest neighborhoods can get up to 10 to 20 degrees warmer than the coolest ones.
Even beyond heat islands, the DMV region is getting hotter for everyone. D.C. now experiences, on average, 10 more days above 90 degrees each year than it did in 1970, according to analysis by Climate Central.
For homeowners, that can mean higher electricity bills in the summer. High temperatures can also speed up deterioration of building materials, “causing damage to wood, paint, roofing, carpets, and furniture,” according to Climate Check’s Climate Change Heat Adaptation Guide for Homeowners.
How to Find Out Your Climate Risks
Whether you’re a prospective homebuyer or already a homeowner, it can be useful to understand the climate risks that your specific house faces. A number of online platforms have recently cropped up with the aim of providing that information, including Augurisk, Climate Check, and Risk Factor. All three will allow users to search for an address to see its estimated climate risks. Most of the services are free, though some sites offer more detailed reports that you have to pay for.
The federal government’s Climate Mapping for Resilience and Adaptation site is another good (and free) resource and also enables users to look at future risks.
Climate change may seem like a far-away problem, but its impacts are already being felt. For anyone looking at a long-term mortgage, it’s even more important to be armed with all the information about how our warming planet could impact a home or neighborhood. Just like checking the weather to decide on an outfit, checking climate risk can set up homeowners and homebuyers to best handle whatever comes their way.
