Heading for disaster?

Risk types

Heat risk, based on the typical number of extremely hot days one could expect in the future, was listed as the most common danger, affecting almost all the homes built in the last two years.

Next came storm-risk, affecting 78% of mostly older homes, principally in the northeast of the country, followed by fire, drought and flood, with 25% of the nation’s homes at risk.

The sobering findings, showing scant regard for climate change warnings, also reveal that the US is building and subsidizing homes in the wrong places, according to economist Jenny Schuetz.

She told Redfin that homes were being constructed farther out from urban areas because the easy-to-use land had already been built on.

“Increasingly, we have to build new housing farther and farther out from downtown areas because the easy-to-use land has been built out and it’s often difficult to add more housing in the urban core,” she explained.