Until recently, some of the fastest-growing places in the U.S. were also among the most exposed to climate risk. But that’s starting to change—more Americans are now moving out of the areas that are most likely to flood.
In the Miami area, where nearly a third of homes face flood risk, nearly 70,000 more people moved away than moved in last year, according to a new report from Redfin. In Houston, the domestic outflow was more than 30,000 people; in Brooklyn, where around a quarter of homes face flood risk, around 28,000 more people left than moved in. In Florida’s Pinellas County, where many homes were hit hard by Hurricane Helene, around 4,000 more people left for other parts of the state or country.
Florida “has been a migration destination, but this year the Florida housing market changed a lot,” says Daryl Fairweather, chief economist at Redfin. “We’ve seen a downward trend in home values there, so we wanted to explore what is going on.”
The team looked at the highest-risk counties for flooding, where the biggest percentages of homes face flood risk, using climate risk scores from First Street, and then compared those to the lowest-risk counties. High-risk counties were losing more people, and low-risk counties were gaining them. (The caveat: because of international immigration, places like Houston and Miami didn’t see net population loss last year—Redfin’s data focuses only on domestic moves.)
Climate risk obviously isn’t the only reason that people move. Cost is another major factor, as the price of housing has gone up in places like Miami. But in a Redfin survey, “concern for natural disasters or climate risks in my previous area” was the most common reason cited by Florida residents for a move. In some cases, people who moved may have lost their homes in a disaster. Others may be struggling with the rising cost of insurance premiums.
In some cases, people aren’t moving that far; people leaving Pinellas County often moved to non-flood zones in nearby Pasco County. But some people who left flood-prone areas may be “boomerang” movers who arrived in the pandemic and now are going back to other states where they lived before.
“One of the reasons that we hear from our agents that people are leaving these places that during the pandemic, people moved to migration destinations like Houston or Miami, got there, and realized that they are really hot,” Fairweather says. “And then it’s not as affordable so they thought.”
It’s not clear if the trend will stick—Houston had an outflow of people moving after Hurricane Harvey, but then gained more residents during the pandemic, and now that’s reversing again. But people are increasingly becoming aware of climate risk. “As there have been more high-profile storms happening, flooding is something that’s more on the minds of home buyers,” says Fairweather. “It’s just an added cost when it comes to affordability.”
