- Last year, more people moved into than out of the most fire- and flood-prone areas of the US.
- A surge in migration to the Sunbelt has helped exacerbate this trend.
- While transplants are attracted by cheaper real estate, they may face higher costs in the long term.
Texas and Florida are holding onto their appeal as destinations for transplants. But many movers are trading lower taxes and more affordable homes for a higher exposure to flooding and wildfires.
Tens of thousands more people moved into than out of the most flood- and fire-prone areas of the US last year, driven by migration to Texas and Florida, according to a new report from the real estate company Redfin.
US counties with the highest risk of wildfires saw 63,365 more people move in than out in 2023, Redfin found. This shift was driven mostly by population gains in Texas counties. Counties with a high risk of flooding gained 16,144 new residents last year, driven largely by population increases in Florida, the report found.
At the same time, counties least at risk of fires and flooding saw their populations shrink last year. Redfin found that a net 38,401 people moved out of low-fire-risk counties, while 6,892 moved out of low-flood-risk counties.
This trend isn't new. In a 2021 report, Redfin found that the 50 countries most at risk of extreme heat saw their populations expand by almost 5% between 2016 and 2020. That shift was accelerated by pandemic-era patterns of people fleeing big cities, as Business Insider reported last year. The number of people who moved into the most flood- and fire-prone counties in the US more than doubled in 2021 and 2022, Redfin reported last year.
A lower cost of living in the short term but higher risks long-term
Many movers prioritize housing affordability and other cost-of-living concerns over climate and environmental issues. A surge of people have moved from more expensive coastal cities to lower-cost locales, particularly in the Sunbelt, farther from large metros and closer to natural amenities. These locations are often more vulnerable to natural disasters.
"It's human nature to focus on current benefits, like waterfront views or a low cost of living, over costs that could rack up in the long run, like property damage or a decrease in property value," Daryl Fairweather, Redfin's chief economist, said last year. "It's also human nature to discount risks that are tough to measure, like climate change."
But migration into flood- and fire-prone areas appears to be slowing somewhat. The number of people who've moved to the most flood-prone counties in the US has fallen significantly since 2022, Redfin found. The Houston metro area, which is particularly susceptible to storms and flooding, has also lost population, even as its real estate prices are lower than surrounding areas. Shorter moves within states also suggest Americans are becoming more sensitive to climate risks, according to First Street Foundation, a nonprofit that measures climate risks.
The increasing frequency of extreme weather events is likely influencing movers. Those events are also helping send home insurance premiums through the roof — and even leading some insurers to pull out of entire regions. In California, for example, two major insurers — State Farm and Allstate — announced they would stop accepting new clients in the state.
Most Americans don't want to move into riskier areas. The vast majority of house hunters — 57% — say living in "an area where homes are at low risk of a natural or climate disaster such as fire, flood, poor air quality" is a "must have," while 28% say they'd be willing to live in an area at higher risk of natural or climate disasters if it meant finding an affordable home, according to a recent Redfin survey.
Lower-income Americans tend to live in areas more vulnerable to extreme weather. In many cities, lower-income and predominantly Black neighborhoods are in areas with less tree cover, higher temperatures, and a greater risk of flooding. Black residents of Southeastern states are more likely to live in places impacted by excessive heat, flooding, and hurricanes, an analysis from McKinsey found in 2023.
A Brookings Institution report last year recommended several ways that policymakers can encourage Americans to seek climate safety. The researchers argued that Congress and the Federal Housing Finance Agency should work with mortgage lenders and property insurers to factor climate risk into their rates, charging homeowners more based on how much risk they're taking on.
Often, homebuyers don't know what kinds of climate risks their property faces, so state and local governments could develop rules about what information needs to be disclosed to a potential homebuyer and then impose higher taxes on riskier property.
"Higher fees in risky areas serve two purposes: they encourage price-sensitive households to choose safer locations, and they also provide local governments with more revenue to upgrade the climate resilience of infrastructure," Jenny Schuetz and Julia Gill of Brookings wrote.
Zoning and other land-use regulations, Schuetz and Gill argued, should be reformed to encourage more dense development in safer places and less sprawl into particularly climate-impacted areas. The researchers recommended that local policymakers think more carefully about where to invest in infrastructure — including roads, schools, and water and sewage capacity — in climate-impacted areas to either discourage or encourage people to move to certain areas.