UBC/U Chicago Study: Homes The Sea Will Swamp By 2100 Sold For More In Denier-Heavy Neighborhoods

[hatrack]

EDIT

Researchers from the University of British Columbia and the University of Chicago assembled data on sales of more than 10 million homes from the real estate database company Zillow covering the period between 1997 and 2017. They focused on homes within 50 kilometers of the U.S. Atlantic, Pacific, and Gulf Coasts. They cross-referenced the home sale information with data on climate change beliefs from the Yale Climate Opinion Survey and a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration map of areas likely to be inundated by six feet of sea level rise.

Overall, 72.32 percent of people in the study area professed to believe that climate change is happening. And 8.5 percent of the properties analyzed could be flooded by future sea level rise. But both of those numbers vary a lot from place to place. Some parts of the U.S. coastline are hotspots of climate denial, and some are hotspots of sea level rise risk.

The researchers fed their data into a mathematical model of the real estate market. The upshot of this analysis: homes likely to be inundated in 2100 currently sell for about 7% more in neighborhoods with a high percentage of climate deniers than similar homes in climate believer neighborhoods.

The result remains even after controlling for a host of other variables such as home size and amenities, distance from the coast, zoning, housing supply, and income and political affiliation of local residents. This suggests that the price differential reflects people’s beliefs about future climate risk, the researchers say. Climate deniers think coastal property is a better long-term investment than climate believers do, so they’re willing to pay more for it.

EDIT

http://www.anthropocenemagazine.org/2019/11/climate-denial-is-inflating-local-real-estate-prices/

[Mike 03]

1. How much of that climate denial is real?

One takeaway from "The Water Will Come" is that people who owned high value property in high risk zones and realtors downplayed global warming and sea rise for their potential future benefit but privately worried about it. Their goal is to be able to sell that property at some future date and get the hell out. (The chapter is called "Real Estate Roulette" I think). In other words, if I owned such a property and planned to sell it when time was running out, I'd probably pretend I wasn't concerned about it either. Also, realtors and sellers have "talking points," for example that the installation of gigantic sea water pumps and rains will somehow miraculously save the day. "The water will just go down the drain!"

Didn't Mark Twain have a quote about "people don't know something if their paycheck depends on them not knowing it"? (That's a terrible paraphrase. His quote was much better, but you get the idea.)

EDIT: That quote is Upton Sinclair's.

It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.

Upton Sinclair

[Delphinus]

2. That quote

sends chills up my spine. It is so true.