As climate change continues to influence weather patterns, not all areas of the U.S. will be equally exposed to natural hazard risks. While some locations may not be ideal choices for property investment in the future, there are other areas that data scientists have demonstrated will be sheltered from the damaging effects of natural catastrophes.

In Part 2 of this episode, host Maiclaire Bolton Smith continues the conversation with CoreLogic Chief Scientist Howard Botts to see where the safest places to live in the U.S. will be in the face of climate change.  

In This Episode

• 1:13 – So where are the safest places to live in the U.S. today?
• 2:44 – Are we expecting these areas to become boomtowns? They have affordable real estate.
• 5:22 – When factoring in future climate change scenarios, where will the safest places to live be?
• 6:21 – Macro- versus micro-migration patterns. Sometimes moving a few blocks can make a home more resilient.
• 9:33 – If El Nino arrives, how will it affect the weather and the subsequent natural catastrophes?
• 10:18 – Are millennial homeowners more likely than baby boomers to consider climate change when purchasing a property?
• 12:42 – How do earthquakes fit into climate change property risk profiles?

 Up Next: Using Data Science to Examine Riskiest US Areas to Live Amid Climate Change

Find full episodes with all our guests in our podcast archive here: https://clgx.co/3zqhBZt

Maiclaire Bolton Smith:

I'm sure I'm not the only one that's thinking, how does earthquake fit into all of this? Not a climate risk peril, but when we talk about the coastal regions, earthquake is a high risks.

Erika Stanley:

Welcome back to Part Two of our miniseries on the riskiest and safest places to live in the U.S. for natural disasters and climate change. If you missed Part One, I do recommend going back and catching up on last week's episode. To recap, we introduced our guest, Howard Botts, and talked about where climate change will have the greatest consequences in the U.S. and what that means for the future of certain regions. Let's jump into it.

MBS:

So coastal cities, in particular, not ideal, not the best places to live for natural hazards, but the areas, as you mentioned, people flock to because they're nice. We both live in California because it's beautiful here. But they are exposed to wildfire here in California, and it is those coastal regions that do seem to be the most risky. On the opposite side of the coin, does it mean that the center of the country is then the safest place to live? I think of tornadoes and things that happen in the center of the country. So where's the best place to live?

Howard Botts:

Well, if we just look purely at climate change and natural hazard risk, not looking at culture, healthcare, schools, the least risky places would be in the Intermountain West where you have cool, semi-arid climates, often relatively high altitude, low humidity, zero exposure essentially to hurricanes, little bit of exposure to wildfire or inland flooding and some severe convective storm, hail, winds.

But over time, we think those risks are going to remain low, and so if we kind of pick a few counties, and again, it can vary significantly across a county in terms of risk, but what we found in our analysis is: McKinley County, New Mexico, which is the county just to the west of Santa Fe and Albuquerque.

MBS:

Okay.

HB:

Major city is Gallup on Route 66. So 6,400 feet in elevation. So kind of that high altitude that I was talking about.

MBS:

Right.

HB:

Others, places like Duchesne County, Utah, up in the northwest corner of Utah, Conejos County, Colorado, right on the border with New Mexico. And then my favorite, Summit County, Colorado, home to Breckenridge. Cool summers, abundant snowfall. So water and temperature would never be an issue.

MBS:

Right. Wow. So that's interesting. Quite recently on this podcast we just had Molly Boesel. We talked about home price growth, home price insights and specifically about that area, Albuquerque-Santa Fe, New Mexico. It is an area of our country that has experienced kind of the most moderate home price growth according to the CoreLogic Home Price Index.

So, I guess it's safe to say that it's an area that's probably appealing too in terms of affordability of housing compared to many of the coastal regions which are very expensive, and we're seeing still some quite strong increases in home price growth as well. But going back to what you mentioned when you talked about Las Vegas and some of those desert regions before, is drought an issue for these areas of New Mexico, specifically with climate change? Are we worried about drought to now make these potentially safest places get to the least safe places as time goes on?

HB:

Well, if we look at Santa Fe and Albuquerque, as you just mentioned, both of those cities are on the Upper Rio Grande River, and we anticipate that we won't see a marked decrease in the amount of water in those. So since at the upper end of the river, they're probably safe. Kind of plentiful groundwater in those areas. Some of the other counties I mentioned, I think if you did get massive growth, you could quickly drain the aquifers in those areas. My guess would be, Maiclaire, we're going to see people moving to areas of moderate climatic risk. If we think about California, the area around San Luis Obispo, Paso Robles. I think most of the coastal areas will have, because the Alaskan Current comes down, the Pacific, it will remain relatively cool, so you won't have as much heat as an issue.

I think in the East, we're seeing places like Asheville, North Carolina, other places in the kind of Appalachian foothills, kind of the sweet spot between some risk, but a lot of environmental amenities. So people that like mountains, like oceans, like foothills, there are still plenty of places that are lower risk, but not the lowest risk that would be ideal places perhaps to relocate.

MBS:

Okay. So I want to now specifically look at climate change. And when we look at some of these places that you've just talked about and we put into consideration climate change, some of the stuff that has come out of the different scenario planning from the IPCC, what do we think is going to happen as the climate changes if we go out even 10 years, but more like 50 years, even if we go beyond that. What are we looking at? What's going to happen?

HB:

Well, when we talk about it, we often talk about large relocations of people essentially, but it's really a story of macro and micro. There's going to be substantial impacts on obviously certain areas of the cities. Say New York City, a number of studies have been done showing that you're going to have substantial migration from potentially one part of the city to another.

MBS:

Sure.

HB:

You think about low-lying areas up to Washington Heights, where you're high above the river, and others. So I think in California we're going to see retreat away from the coastline. As sea level rises, a lot of our cliffside homes are starting to fall into the ocean, railroad tracks, other infrastructure.

So what are we going to see? I think it's going to be obviously a slow change. We're going to see an increased desire to how do we mitigate against the changes we're seeing? So if you think about coastal areas, they're talking about New York City building something like they have in Venice, a surge structure to prevent high sea levels from inundating areas. Or talking about building sea walls, other kinds of things around Miami to protect the barrier islands like Miami Beach.

So, I think we're going to see a lot of infrastructural changes, but I think the two big themes are going to be mitigation and resiliency, which sort of go hand in hand. So I suspect what we're going to see over the next decade is increased intense rainfall events.

MBS:

Okay.

HB:

So flash flooding, in particular, well outside the 100-year flood zone.

MBS:

Yeah.

HB:

We're going to see increased wildfire intensity. People say, "Well, this year in California it's so wet. We won't have a high wildfire season." Forgetting that wet allows a lot of vegetation to grow, which then...

MBS:

We got a lot of fuel.

HB:

... dries out. Yeah, exactly. So I think it's going to be a slow change and allow us time, I think, to build up our defenses. But I think one of the things that we often discount is heat, and that will continue to be an issue in summer impacting a lot of places. So as we see sea level rising, maybe a foot to 20 inches over the course of this century, we'll certainly see people having to relocate to different areas.

So I think lots of things, and obviously hurricanes, storm surge, others being events we're going to have to keep our eye on and make sure that we mitigate. So there are some things, we can harden our homes against hail, mitigate against wildfire risk to some degree, but when it comes to flooding, probably whether it's saltwater from hurricane-driven storm surge or river or flash flooding, those are a lot harder for individuals to do much other than perhaps elevation.

MBS:

Sure, yeah.

HB:

So we'll be looking to federal infrastructure projects probably.

ES:

MBS:

Yeah, it's really interesting. I've mentioned a couple times in this podcast that I'm in the process of trying to buy a new home and this is what's top of my mind as I'm looking in new areas to buy this new home. And my real estate agent sent us one house and she's like, "Oh, what about this one? It's beautiful." And I'm like, "Do you know what I do for a living? No, the wildfire risk is so high in that area." She's like, "Oh, yeah, you'd need wildfire insurance here." And I'm like, "No, I'm not buying this house because I need wildfire insurance here." If the house is going to burn down, I don't want it. If the house is going to flood, there's another one. I'm like, "There's a river across the street." She's like, "Yeah, it's lovely." I'm like, "No, it's not. It's going to flood."

So I think more people may be having this perspective of things. It's the awareness that goes along with climate change. It's the awareness that goes around with hazards. I think even of New Orleans and how it was devastated during Hurricane Katrina, but that's what caused them to put these mitigative measures in place with their sea walls and their barriers, and that's now protecting them from future hurricane, severe storm surge damage like they had in Hurricane Katrina. So to see other areas of the country kind of learn from that and just see what's happening with climate change and really focus on mitigation is really a fantastic step forward, I think.

HB:

Yeah. I think interestingly, I think we've seen a generational shift, like you're talking about Maiclaire, from perhaps I'm part of the baby boomer generation where we just picked things based on amenities. "Oh, that's a beautiful creek across the street," or something else. And I think real estate agents typically didn't want to know anything about natural hazard risk because they'd have to disclose it.

But I think what we found is particularly among millennial homebuyers and others, they really want to understand what are all the risks that are here. I think much more tuned in to that. And so we're finding at CoreLogic that we're now embedding a lot of our hazard products, natural hazard risk, whether it be wildfire or flood or other things, into the products we're serving up to real estate agents so they can become consultants essentially to help people understand what is the potential risk at a particular site. I guess sellers maybe don't want the buyer to know all the hazards, but certainly, as a buyer, that's something you're really interested in.

MBS:

Really interested in. Yeah, definitely. Okay. So I know the purpose of this podcast really was climate change analytics, looking at climate change risk. But we're talking about some of the best and worst, most desirable, least desirable places to live in the U.S. because of natural hazards. I'm sure I'm not the only one that's thinking, how does earthquake fit into all of this? Not a climate risk peril, but when we talk about the coastal regions, earthquake is our high risk. So can we talk just a little bit about how does the earthquake skew the data?

HB:

Sure, be happy to. But before I do that, I'd be remiss to say that there isn't a climate change relationship to earthquakes. The two, Maiclaire, would be, one would be tsunami.

MBS:

Yep.

HB:

So as sea level rises, we're going to have more tsunami impact areas, and all the western states are and Hawaii are revising their tsunami inundation maps.

MBS:

Yeah.

HB:

And certainly we know the Cascadia Fault off of Washington and Oregon could push as high as a 100-foot-high tsunami.

MBS:

Yeah.

HB:

So that would be very impactful.

ES:

Should the fault line rupture again, this will likely lead to tens of billions of dollars in damages. For comparison, the 1994 Northridge Earthquake struck Southern California at a magnitude of 6.7 and caused $15 billion of economic damage at the time. Adjusted for 2023 dollars using the Bureau of Labor Statistics inflation calculator, that figure would be about $31 billion.

HB:

And the other thing that we worry about is fire following earthquakes.

MBS:

Yeah.

HB:

As we get natural gas lines ruptured, if you have high winds at the same time — you may remember a year ago January in Boulder County we had over 1,000 homes burned in the middle of winter in a high-wind event once a fire started. Closer to you in Santa Rosa, the Tubbs Fire burned over 5,600 homes in a high-wind event.

So there are some related hazards to earthquake. That said, you're right, I think earthquake risk certainly is something we can't get away from in California, in particular, and across the West Coast in general. Where I live in Southern California, we have routinely small quakes that we can feel, but everybody's anticipating what happens when the San Andreas Fault, the world's most active fault zone goes, what the impact will be for that. And up in the Bay Area, the Hayward Fault, faults running behind Salt Lake City and others. We all expect, based on historical record, that during our lifetime we could see major earthquake events.

So certainly the key for all of us, as I talked right about at the beginning, our models have structural vulnerability built into them, is to make sure that your homes are made more earthquake-proof by mitigating against all the things that we can do. So we love our mountains. It's something that's pushing those mountains upward, and that's the potential of earthquake. So it's a low-frequency but high-severity event. So...

MBS:

Definitely.

HB:

... most of us will take that over hurricanes or damaging hail anytime.

MBS:

Yeah, a lot of people take the risk until it actually happens and realize how impactful it can be. So yeah, we know that this is one that I'm very passionate about myself.

So, Howard, I loved how that was actually more connected to climate change than we were thinking it was going to be. So yeah, thank you for your perspective today and always. It's always great to chat with you, Howard. Thank you for once again joining me and being a guest here on Core Conversations: A CoreLogic Podcast.

HB:

Well, thank you for the invitation, Maiclaire. Always a pleasure.

MBS:

Well, we will definitely have you back again.

And thank you for listening. I hope you've enjoyed our latest episode. Please remember to leave us a review and let us know your thoughts and subscribe wherever you get your podcast to be notified when new episodes are released. And thanks to the team for helping bring this podcast to life, producer Jessi Devenyns, editor and sound engineer Romie Aromin, our facts guru, Erika Stanley and social media duo, Sarah Buck and Makaila Brooks. Tune in next time for another Core Conversation.