Homeowners relocating because of climate change, wildfires, flooding

Christy Gentry and her husband have been dealing with California’s wildfires for the past four years. 

In 2017, the couple evacuated their Santa Rosa home for three weeks. In 2019, they were forced to cut a trip to Hawaii short and get their animals and stuff out of their house as a fire approached.

“It was just one thing after another. It was smoke, it was the fire danger, the potential of fire danger, the potential of being evacuated,” Gentry said. “It changed the way we viewed our property.”

After so many fires, Gentry and her husband rented a home in Bend, Oregon, in August 2020 so they would have somewhere to go during the California fire season. 

Fires finally hit their property in September 2020. Although they didn’t lose their home, one of their barns burned down and they couldn’t get back to their property until mid-November. So Gentry and her husband bought a home in Bend in January 2021 and now split time between there and Santa Rosa.

“It comes down to feeling safe,” Gentry said. “Everybody has a little PTSD — I won’t even light candles in my house.”

Nearly half of Americans who plan to move in the next year say natural disasters and extreme temperatures factored into their decision to relocate, according to an April survey conducted by real estate brokerage firm Redfin. 

Last month, the United Nations’ climate panel delivered a dire report calling for immediate action. The agency warned that limiting global warming to close to 1.5 degrees Celsius or even 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels “will be beyond reach” in the next two decades without rapid and large-scale reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. The report said that at 2 degrees Celsius, heat extremes would often reach critical tolerance thresholds for agriculture and health.

One in 5 Americans believe climate change is already negatively impacting home values in their areas, and 35% of homeowners have already spent $5,000 or more protecting their homes against climate risk, according to Redfin. Meanwhile, 79% of Americans said they would be hesitant to buy a home in areas with increasing frequency or intensity of natural disasters, 75% said they’d be hesitant to buy in an area with extreme temperatures and 76% said they would be hesitant to purchase in regions with rising sea levels, Redfin’s survey found. 

“We know from these surveys that homebuyers, homeowners, homesellers — they’re recognizing the threat of climate change and it is impacting their home’s values and will impact their home’s values,” said Daryl Fairweather, Redfin’s chief economist. 

At the same time, there’s no shortage of buyers for the properties that concerned homeowners are abandoning — in fact, Redfin found that more people are…