The wildfires currently raging across Southern California are a stark reminder that many of our homes are tinder boxes waiting to go up in smoke. While you can’t predict when or where wildfires will strike, there are a number of steps you can take to harden your home. Here are just a few from our toolkit.
The Southern California wildfires offer a stark reminder of the fragility of our world — and the resilience of our Compass community. Some of our colleagues have lost their homes or face an uncertain future after being forced to evacuate.
If you’d like to help, please consider donating to this relief fund organized by fellow agents. Together, we will overcome this disaster and rebuild.
It’s never too late to give what you can to help relief efforts following the devastating earthquake in Turkey and Syria. Please consider these organizations with your donations.
Last year, the Union of Concerned Scientists issued a report called Underwater: Rising Seas, Chronic Floods, and the Implications for U.S. Coastal Real Estate. Under their worst-case scenario, rising global temperatures and loss of polar ice sheets will result in 1.8 feet of average sea level rise by the year 2045. That puts around 300,000 homes in the United States at risk. At this point, it’s no longer about prevention. It’s about stemming the tide. Read the report here.
As the old saying goes, location is the name of the game in real estate, and that’s especially true here in the Bay Area, with long stretches of ocean and bayfront property constantly in high demand and fetching high prices. But coastal properties selling today could be the victims of flooding and sea level rise related to climate change before the end of a 30-year mortgage agreement. It’s clear from this report that homebuyers understand the risk of going underwater — literally. The question is how you measure the risk against the reward.
Did you know that about 20,000 properties in California alone could face routine flooding within the next generation? You’d think that would be enough to scare buyers away. But we’ve come a long way with technology to mitigate the impacts, like reinforced seawalls and flood control systems, and banks are still willing to finance and insure homes at risk from sea level rise. So the market for coastal properties has remained relatively stable. That could change if floods, fires, and other natural disasters become more regular occurrences.
