One of the more important things to home buyers is location, and a recent survey from Realtor.com has shown that a big part of location for many buyers includes an area’s susceptibility to natural disaster. According to an article in Yale Climate Connections, more than three quarters of buyers surveyed considered the risk to their new homes from floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, and severe winter storms. Another question on the survey found that more than a third of responding homeowners had considered moving due to the threat of natural disaster.
In response, Realtor.com has integrated a new third party tool called Fire Factor into their website, which provides an estimate of the likelihood that any particular listed property might be damaged by wildfire over the next 30 years, based on a combination of factors including regional fire risk, and local factors like topography and vegetation.
Says Sara Brinton, lead project manager for Realtor.com, of the growing concern for homeowners around wildfires, “If there is roofing that’s less flammable … if they’ve removed brush from around the home or installed a sprinkler system or upgraded their windows to make the house more resilient to wildfire, all of those details are really important to feature in the listing.”
