Zillow Removes Climate Risk Scores From Home Listings

Zillow®, the online real estate powerhouse, has made a change on its website. And people are talking about it. Visitors no longer see a home’s risk score for climate factors like flooding or wildfire potential.

Just last year, Zillow adopted calculations from First Street^TM, which assigns risk levels to specific homes. The risk scores rank future risks from flood, wildfire, wind, heat, and air quality from 1 to 10. Zillow’s real estate listings included the scores to help inform home seekers.

What Made Zillow Stop Publishing Risk Scores?

Maybe the surprise was their decision to include them last year. When these risk scores first appeared, you might have wondered: Won’t sellers and their agents be annoyed by this? Will the scores put potential buyers off? Of course, transparency is a virtue, and real estate companies want to be known for offering the most informative features. Climate risk ratings, along with walk scores, school ratings,  transit accessibility, and similar features, would help buyers ask the right questions and find homes they’d be happy with over the long term. Power to the buyers!

But sellers were less than thrilled. It was only a matter of time before the complaints and the pressure began. And now, Zillow’s listings have hyperlinks to First Street’s website, so people can look up the climate risks for specific addresses themselves.

The New York Times reports that Zillow removed the risk score feature after complaints from the California Regional Multiple Listing Service. This MLS, funded by real estate agents and brokers, supplies listing data to Zillow. The same listing service asked the other large real estate companies to delete flood risk information from their online listings, too.

From the listing service’s perspective, some of the risk scores on Zillow’s site looked way off. But are they? Because a property hasn’t flooded in the past, listing companies may believe it’s not going to flood in the future, so the risk scores must be wrong.

No one can be sure when predicting something that hasn’t happened yet. But even having the basic understanding that certain properties and areas have elevated risks can be useful for planning drainage and rain gardens.

And if scores do make buyers pause, this is not necessarily a negative thing. Transparency about a home’s risks would, ideally, cause people to avoid homes and areas facing the highest levels of potential hazards. People would select safer areas. If they decided to move into high-risk areas, they would be on notice. Ultimately, then, we might say it’s better that risks are disclosed, even if the disclosure is imperfect.

First Street stands by its analyses. The Times quoted the First Street CEO as saying:

“Our models are built on transparent, peer-reviewed science and the full methodologies are publicly available for anyone to review on our website.”

Blaming the Messenger, Rather Than Heeding the Message?

A stark number showing high risk does give buyers pause. This has been demonstrated by actual buyer decisions.

Redfin ran a three-month study. The real estate company examined the sales of more than 8,000 home properties showing high flood risk scores. Redfin’s report states that those properties sold by about 1% under market value. This seems to make sense, given that potential buyers would think a home that’s potentially prone to water infiltration might have special insurance needs.  

And what other messengers are making solid efforts to bring this awareness to buyers?

Many states do not require home sellers to tell buyers about their experiences with flooding events, or known risks of wildfires. And other information sources, such as the flood maps available from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), do not show how climate factors are changing a given area’s risk profile.

The First Street models suggest that millions of U.S. homes carry flood risks that federal government websites miss. Meanwhile, the Trump administration is removing climate information from federal websites.

The industry cannot simply wave off the effects of climate change on real estate. Neither can the people who are coming into the market to acquire a deed to a home.  

When Zillow adopted risk scores, as it said in a release at the time, climate risks had become a key part of a home purchase. Many buyers search for this information as an element of due diligence.

So, while the messenger may be taking the heat, the message itself needs more attention, not less.

Passivity Is Not an Option: Towns That Take the Lead

To increase safety and reduce insurance rates, some communities are stepping up to act on climate risks. An example offered by Umair Irfan at Vox is located in the Lake Tahoe area of Nevada and California, where wildfires are a big issue.

Smoke raises air quality concerns for the homes, and fires could soon be much too close for comfort. So the nonprofit Tahoe Fund studied the risks. The group then decided to start a project for fire resistance.

They started with a homeowners’ association in Incline Village, Nevada. The HOA includes 228 luxury homes. Working together, the groups came up with new protocols. They’ll cap the amount of fuels that may be transported. They’ll apply best practices for improving the properties’ fire-safety profile.

Grants are available to incentivize deed holders to get to work. If it sounds like a lot of fuss, consider this. Home insurers are pricing the homes’ policies at significantly lower rates than they previously charged. Most important of all, this community is fortifying itself against future fires.   

Leaving Versus Staying Put: A New Set of Haves and Have-Nots?  

Climate-related fires and storms have become stronger and more frequent. Redfin says climate events will become a reason for deed holders leaving, and choosing other properties. Not necessarily out of state, but locally. Around Los Angeles, Redfin points out, deed holders are already looking to sell homes in the hills, or not to return and rebuild after the deadly fires in 2025.

What about those without the resources to move? Those are the ones who’ll be left in the riskiest areas.

Meanwhile, as the wealthier people move to less developed places, more natural lands will be paved over. That, in turn, worsens stormwater runoff issues and flooding.

We must change what we do that drives climate change in the first place. It appears, at least for now, that social change is beyond the scope of what the real estate market can do. Data at least equips people with the knowledge that, yes, we must make changes.