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hatrack

(59,439 posts)
Tue Mar 21, 2023, 07:43 PM Mar 2023

Areas Popular For Retirement (Warm, Low Cost Of Living) Turn Out To Be Warming Risk Magnets

EDIT

Liz Green hadn't intended to buy this house. She’d been looking at another one here in the River Haven subdivision, 20 miles northeast of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. It had the same beige siding, the same slab foundation and still-growing-in yard, but it was in a location she liked better. At the last minute, though, the developer who built the subdivision slid her into this one. Before she bought the house, Greene said, she asked the builder and the real estate agent if the property tended to flood. “They said, ‘Not a drop.'” Shortly after moving in, she began to get hints that this might not be true. A utility-company worker told Greene, “We wondered who’d get stuck with that lot.”

Soon she understood why. The house sits a good eight feet below the road behind it, and five or six feet lower than the other homes on the block. When it rains, water immediately gathers in the yard. “You get a drizzle, and if the ground is already saturated, it’ll be like a moat around the house,” Greene said. “I sit in water all the time.” So far, the water hasn’t entered her house. But in 2018, two years before Greene bought the property, Hurricane Florence came through and badly flooded the area; her lot was underwater. She’s terrified it will happen again and inundate every­thing she owns.

EDIT

There are hundreds of Horry Counties around the United States. Well before COVID hit, many communities began filling with retiring baby boomers and remote workers in search of beautiful landscapes and a reasonable cost of living. Just about all of them are in regions with significant climate vulnerability. Research from Redfin shows that between 2016 and 2020, the southeastern coast, Texas, Arizona, the interior of California, and the Mountain West all saw big population increases and skyrocketing home values. Those trends increased during the pandemic. At the same time, extreme weather events have been getting worse. In Phoenix, the median home price surged by 69 percent between 2019 and 2022, according to Zillow, even as the Southwest was experiencing its deepest drought in 1,200 years. Shortly before it was battered by Hurricane Ian last fall, the southwest Florida town of Fort Myers was ranked as one of the fastest-growing cities in the nation. Across the West, some of the most popular communities are also the most fire-prone; in recent years, the acreage burned during a typical wildfire season has been double what it was in the 1990s.

Rather than backing away from climate-risky areas, ordinary home buyers and real estate investors are pouring into them—which is the exact opposite response from what climate change experts (or even common sense) would advise. The real estate frenzy has leveled off somewhat since interest rates began rising in mid-2022, but the overall trends are unlikely to change. The United States is experiencing a shortage of around 6 million housing units, and that will continue to drive demand, push prices up, and propel home buyers into climate-risk-prone areas that are affordable.

EDIT/END

https://climatecrocks.com/2023/03/21/lenders-beginning-to-factor-climate-risk/#more-84152

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Areas Popular For Retirement (Warm, Low Cost Of Living) Turn Out To Be Warming Risk Magnets (Original Post) hatrack Mar 2023 OP
A teacher I know was telling me about a seminar madaboutharry Mar 2023 #1
And yet they keeps building housing for all the people moving there. zeusdogmom Mar 2023 #2

madaboutharry

(40,149 posts)
1. A teacher I know was telling me about a seminar
Tue Mar 21, 2023, 07:49 PM
Mar 2023

she attended given by a climate scientist who asserted that temperatures in Phoenix and Tucson could reach 140 degrees in our lifetime. These are temperatures incompatible with human life.

zeusdogmom

(977 posts)
2. And yet they keeps building housing for all the people moving there.
Tue Mar 21, 2023, 07:56 PM
Mar 2023

There is no water either.

And they will want the government to bail them out when the area becomes truely uninhabitable. Sarcasm - perhaps.

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