Homeowners can now assess the risk of climate disaster before
buying a home. It's a new feature from Zillow
that aligns with real estate trends and the rise of
climate concerns and the announcement comes as to hurricanes,
Helene and Milton left behind devastation in Florida and other
parts of the Southeast. According to a recent survey
by the real estate giant, more than 80% of
buyers now consider climate risk when purchasing a home,
flood risk followed by wildfires ranked as top concerns.
Joining us now is my man. He's a real
estate developer and the founder and CEO of the Lagoon
development company. As we mentioned earlier, this new
feature for homeowners is to, you know, to
evaluate the climate risk before purchasing a home comes on
the heels of hurricanes, Helene and Milton. And
over the last few weeks, we've seen thousands of
homes destroyed. So going back years ago to hurricanes
, Katrina and Ida, why is there now a
growing concern in climate for buyers? Well, people
are looking at these property tours and they're wondering if
they need to bring a life jacket. I mean
, what's going on is really crazy. These storms
have been very intense and of course, nobody wants
to buy a home that doubles as a floatation device
. They don't want to be swimming in their kitchen
. And the new climate data is really important,
especially to people who are millennials. Um And these
folks uh generation Z, they're looking at this data
and saying, hey, I wanna live in peace
and quiet. It's less important for me to have
an ocean view and I don't wanna worry about the
ocean being in my living room. Um So what's
happening now is that people are really shifting towards buying
new homes and that's why you continue to see another
reason why the home builders are seeing record sales.
People want to be in new homes and new communities
because these old communities that are maybe close to downtown
that have homes built in the forties, fifties and
sixties. Those are the homes that are most,
most likely to be destroyed uh during a storm.
Uh I was talking to developers in Houston, uh
Maple Development and Starwood Lante House. These folks are
seeing record lot sales and home sales because their new
master plan communities uh are actually designed to um make
sure that when storms come in, when flooding occurs
, this streets are used as drainage to make sure
all the water leaves and the homes don't actually flood
. In fact, um The biggest developer in Houston
Lan Tejas, uh they have 14 active communities in
the last two storms. They had no communities.
Absolutely none had any home flooding. So people are
shifting away from these older homes, uh to new
homes in Master Plan communities. I mean, the
fact that you can see, you know, the
trend shifting and you mentioned just generationally gen Z being
really at the helm, if you will of,
of really taking this into account, they're not the
only ones, of course. But I'm curious how
does this affect, you know, the property value
as a whole, especially with those gen Z buyers
that uh you know, it, it's quite the
task to go ahead and purchase to begin with.
Yeah, you're gonna see homes that are newer in
these communities uh that are designed to deal with flooding
uh to, they're gonna sustain better values than older
homes that have been built in the forties, fifties
and sixties. I mean, look the United States
today with all our resources, we shouldn't have people
living in homes that were built in the twenties,
thirties and forties, those homes need to get,
we need to get rid of them and we need
cities, local cities to pass laws to allow for
development so that we can have more affordable, more
attainable housing built for our residents. Um So when
you look at the devastation that happens, most of
the devastation usually is older homes that are not built
towards uh with modern building codes. And um there
are cities and places where there's been a lot of
new laws that have been passed recently to allow for
more development. But that's really the only way we're
gonna get around this because new construction typically is not
that affected by these storms. You normally see,
uh, those types of buildings, uh, withstanding
even category three, fours and fives. Yeah.
Yeah. And we, and we're already seeing these
disasters really change the way people think about homeownership,
especially in areas that are prone to climate risks.
What are you hearing from prospective homebuyers? Yeah.
Uh, the home buyers are looking for new homes
and new communities there. Uh, today there's incessant
demand for housing because we really have 3 to 4
million missing housing units in the United States. And
those are, they're looking for better quality homes where
they have peace of mind that they're not gonna have
, um, any impact by large storms. Of
course, uh, if you're in the sun belt
pretty much anywhere Florida, Texas, you know,
there are gonna be hurricanes, there are gonna be
tropical storms that are gonna cause damage. But if
you buy in a new community, you're more likely
to, um, have less worry and could be
able to live in peace of mind in that house
. I mean, I, I'm gonna bring up
because I know you're in Miami Beach. I,
I'm from South Florida as well and I know when
hurricane Andrew came through in, in, you know
, category five hurricane, it completely changed the building
code basically and really helped kind of as you're mentioning
, you know, update the building so it's safer
. But at the end of the day, Miami
Beach still, you know, it gets flooded,
you know, brickle all these areas. So I
mean, how, how far can new builds really
go when you're in these areas that really, like
you said, the hurricanes are gonna come and at
the end of the day, the rest of the
infrastructure isn't holding up. Yeah, right now,
there's too much value that could potentially be at risk
. So cities will make decisions, tough choices to
make improvements to make sure they can get rid of
flooding in the city of Miami Beach. For example
, they have tremendous drainage systems, new vaults that
have been created to get rid of floodwaters and it
is working for the most part. And now,
uh the city of Miami is considering building a wall
around downtown to prevent floodwaters from entering the city.
So there are solutions. Um What ends up happening
is these municipalities tend to react very slowly until there's
dramatic change that requires emergency action. But uh there
are a lot of smart minds behind it and eventually
the problems will be solved. Uh You would think
that because of these storms, actually, the values
in coastal areas would go down, but that's not
really been the case. There's tremendous demand for people
to live with an ocean view and they're still preferring
an ocean view and not worried about the ocean being
in their backyard. Uh I mean, nobody wants
their backyard to become an Olympic size swimming pool,
but it's so far not really affecting demand for coastal
coastal cities and people and even insurance companies. And
if you look at the rates and banks providing loans
, you got a lot of experts on the mortgage
side of banks and they would not be lending 30
year mortgages if they weren't looking at the data,
I'm thinking that this house would no longer be livable
in, in 10 to 20 years and the data
doesn't support um you know, limiting development so far
in these coastal areas. Uri Man, founder and
CEO of the Lagoon Development Company. Thank you so
much for your time, your insight. We appreciate 00:07:00.990 --> it.