These Ultra-Luxe Homes Are in Climate Danger Zones—Why Do People Continue Buying Them?

According to 2023 data from the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, 72% of Americans believe global warming is happening. However, only 42% think it will personally affect them. “There’s much better awareness of climate change generally,” reiterates Michael Berkowitz, executive director of the University of Miami’s Climate Resilience Academy and former managing director of the Rockefeller Foundation’s 100 Resilient Cities. “But I still think we have a ways to go in terms of people really internalizing it.” One example can be found in the ultra-luxury real estate market.

Take Florida’s seaside Miami-Dade and Broward counties, which each sit at an average elevation of six feet. By 2060, sea levels are predicted to rise enough that 60% of the land would be underwater; by 2100, both will be entirely submerged. Since 2006, chronic tidal flooding, also called sunny day flooding, in Miami has increased more than 400%, caused by the changing climate’s more frequent storm surges and higher tides. Yet the market demand for luxury homes priced at $10 million and above in these areas remains unbelievably strong.

“There’s tremendous demand from affluent individuals all over the world to own a property here,” says Douglas Elliman realtor Dina Goldentayer, whose sales have exceeded $2 billion since 2021. “Prices in Miami Beach, the market I specialize in, are two times what they were pre-pandemic.” When the wealthy have the luxury of choice in where they live, they are still choosing America’s coasts, despite their status as climate danger zones.

“Some people’s decisions are driven by where their kids will be going to school. Others may not have kids, and their decision could be around, ‘Will my boat fit at this property?’ But the fact that Florida’s economic policies are so favorable to ultra-high-net-worth people is why this market continues to rage on way past Covid,” Goldentayer reveals, noting that people in Miami tend to own properties for three to five years. “I can’t remember the last time I had the rising sea water conversation with someone,” she adds, saying that “political reasons” are another major factor she has seen in clients moving to Miami from other states like California.

Compass agent Chad Carroll, who focuses on the ultra-luxury market in both Miami-Dade and Broward counties, feels real estate agents have a duty to “educate” their clients. “When a client brings up [climate change], we go through the changes that the cities are doing, whether they’re installing pump systems, raising sea walls or streets, undergrounding power lines, and their timelines,” he says, noting his clients are generally purchasing with a long-term lens. However, both say that unless a property for sale is below the flood plain, buyers are not generally concerned.

That approach is short-sighted, Berkowitz urges. “A lot of the strategies you might employ to keep the water out aren’t relevant because the water will just come up through the porous Miami limestone,” he says, noting that climate experts “have a lot to learn from public health” in how to approach disseminating information on “reducing risks, building adaptive strategies, and mitigating the impacts.” He cites the surgeon general’s successful antismoking campaign, which changed the public’s behaviors “over three generations.”

On the other coast, California’s ultra-luxury residential buyers are slowly becoming a bit more cautious. In 2023, more people moved out of high-risk fire counties like the coastal Ventura and Santa Cruz and the inland Solano than into them, says a new Redfin survey. In Los Angeles, where extreme heat and drought is expected to become more intense and prolonged due to climate change, high-end home buyers are concerned about natural disasters so far as it affects their bottom line. “Climate change is always a topic of discussion, especially when the buyer learns about the insurance costs,” says luxury realtor Shelton Wilder, referencing the fact that many home insurance companies have fled California and Florida due to increased claims after more frequent environmental disasters. “I have buyers ask about the structural aspects of a home pertaining to earthquakes, so we are always doing inspections to ensure the property is insurable.” These conversations are all happening while, earlier this year, three multimillion dollar homes on a cliff in Dana Point, California, appeared at serious risk of falling into the ocean.

However, the same survey reveals that more buyers moved into high-risk flood counties in Florida and Texas, despite extreme climate trends, increased hurricanes, and rising tides. “The weather and location continue to outweigh the risk of natural disasters,” says Wilder. “I think it’s because of appreciation. In desired areas like Malibu and Brentwood, the land still holds its value.” At the moment, the same can be said for luxury homes in flood-risky Florida and Texas, including major cities like Houston.

But will attitudes change when the stakes become more tangible? One estimate by Jesse Keenan—director of the Center on Climate Change and Urbanism and associate professor of sustainable real estate and urban planning at Tulane University’s School of Architecture—claims that 50 million people in the United States could move to avoid the effects of severe climate change. Another by Abrahm Lustgarten—climate change reporter and author of new book On the Move: The Overheating Earth and the Uprooting of America—predicts “tens of millions,” prompted as “drought, coastal flooding, crop failures, intensifying hurricanes, extreme heat, and wildfires will begin to overlap and close in on the country from its edges, slowly making entire regions less attractive, and even, in some extreme cases, unlivable” as well as when “changing environmental conditions affect their economic standing.”

Berkowitz hopes that residents might embrace reality before our collective actions drive that to happen. If we don’t have three-generations-time to overcome the misinformation and disinformation that have allowed 39% of the population to ignore that climate change is at all affecting the United States, perhaps a major environmental event might serve as a wake-up call. “Are we going to be ready for the crisis that creates the opportunity to create a more sustainable, risk-aware, and resilient world?” asks Berkowitz, citing the mere six months it took to transition to fully remote work during the pandemic. “In some ways, that’s what going to take.”