NY Times Thinks Government Should Force Real Estate Site To List Climate (scam) Effects

Funny how this happens so darned often with the doomsday cult

What Zillow Won’t Tell You

When Zillow, the country’s largest real estate site, added information to property listings last year disclosing flood, wildfire, heat and air-quality risks, it was following its own research: More than 80 percent of home shoppers consider climate risk in their decisions. The data allowed families to weigh these risks before signing a mortgage.

Last month, the scores disappeared from the listings.

The real estate brokers and agents behind the California Regional Multiple Listing Service, one of the largest housing databases in the country, had complained about Zillow’s climate scores. Zillow partly depends on C.R.M.L.S. to supply its listings, and it removed them from every home on the site.

Climate change has always been a battle on two fronts: physical and informational. The physical impacts are unmistakable — extreme heat, stronger hurricanes, deadlier wildfires, chronic flooding. But the informational battle has been intense, as well, with decades of deliberate efforts to cast doubt on settled science and remove it from public view. Now the “information war” has come to real estate, where the consequences of unknown risk can be particularly severe.

As I noted back on the 2nd, the actual listings are way, way down the page, so, do most people even make it down and actually look at the data? And there are still links to First Street, where cultists can subscribe for $37 a month.

For home sellers and buyers in such high-risk zones, the difficult reality is that climate risks need to be both conspicuous and priced into listings. Consumers can insist that climate-risk scores return to Zillow, and in the meantime, use the platforms that still provide them, like Redfin, Realtor.com and Homes.com. Those companies are facing similar pressure from C.R.M.L.S., and hearing from buyers now matters.

They can pay the $37 a month

States can also strengthen disclosure laws so that a home’s flood or wildfire risk isn’t something buyers discover only after a disaster. As Susan Crawford, a climate adaptation scholar and writer, suggests, the government should fully fund a modernized flood mapping program that shows not only today’s risk, but how flooding is expected to change. Finally, real-estate platforms must stop fighting the facts and start preparing people for the dangers that already exist.

So, force websites to provide this information so the small number of Warmists who care can see it, instead of paying $37 a month.