Real estate development/sales in a new climate

By Lance Olsen, Unfiltered 9-12-07

The new climate brings many new questions with it. And it should. In private correspondence with one of America's climate scientists a few days ago, he mentioned a blogger who fretted that too much attention is given to the new climate's environmental handiwork -- fires, drought,
shrunked streams, warmed lakes, an uncertain future for scads of species -- but in fact the new climate "affects everything."

Amen.

I've said before on New West that, if nothing else does it, water will force its own powerful limits on the West's disconcerting sprawl (population) boom, and that evidence from the sciences indicate that the new climate will force a downward trend in the water supply.

More recently, I jumped into a New West repartee by saying that the real estate industry will come around to including at least some major research reports as part of its own due diligence in investment policy

Looking through my files for something unrelated this morning, I found a reminder that it's not just the real estate industry doing due diligence on clime.

Potential homebuyers, the retail end of the game, are already beginning to raise questions of climate as they decide where to buy their next home.


NATURE
Vol 448 | 2
August 2007

CORRESPONDENCE

Climate information helps
homeowners make choices

SIR — You raise the question in your News
story ‘Website homes in on climate hazards’
(Nature 447, 360–361; 2007) of whether
homeowners can make good use of the
climate risk information provided by our
company. We have had tens of thousands of
visitors to our site, and thousands of requests
for reports, indicating that homeowners want
this information to make their own property
risk assessment, given the potential risks to
their safety, retirement equity and quality of
life. We have heard clearly that people feel
empowered by having this information to
assess their risk for themselves, rather than
waiting for the possibility that an insurance
company’s underwriting changes will affect
their options and their property value.

David Purcell
Climate Appraisal Services LLC, 25 Abbey Road,
Easton, Connecticut 06612, USA

Now, I'm not here to endorse Mr. Purcell's service. All that needs doing, and his letter to the editors of Nature does it very well, is to establish that at least some homebuyers are getting at least a little clmate-wise.

This fact should not be lost as the West weighs its future. Given that the New West has replaced the boom and bust of extractive industries with the boom and bust of an exuberant housing boom, where does our next bust lie?

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