Climate change is shaping real estate decisions for landlords, developers, and investors alike. With natural disasters and extreme weather events becoming more frequent and destructive, analyzing climate risk is essential for developers and investors hoping to meet shareholder expectations. Datastory’s user-friendly MapDash™ platform provides off-the-shelf location intelligence to quickly assess environmental vulnerabilities for land parcels and built properties, making it easier than ever to factor climate risk into their market analysis.

Recent surveys reveal the extent to which climate is factoring into real estate decisions

Within the residential real estate market, a majority of prospective homebuyers now consider climate risks like flooding, wildfires, storms, and heat exposure across regions when purchasing a property. According to Zillow, over 80% of buyers say climate-related factors play into their decision-making process. This is especially true of younger generations who form the bulk of the homebuying population for the next few decades.

However, just 23% of buyers say they would move to an area with less climate risk, constrained by housing affordability and other priorities. In fact, the same study showed that 27% are open to higher risk areas if the property meets their other criteria, such as price, amenities, and proximity to work.

This sentiment has notably infiltrated the commercial real estate landscape as well. Whether in the context of investment and development of affordable multi-family assets, or in the case of a mixed-used real estate opportunity, the tenants and customers that drive revenue for commercial real estate are seeking sustainable and resilient options more than ever before.

Climate risk profiling made easy with MapDash

With both commercial and residential real estate stakeholders growing more climate-conscious but still limited in options, those developers that are leveraging location intelligence to identify and develop lower-risk opportunities gain a notable advantage. MapDash enables site selectors and portfolio to quickly understand the risk profile by providing preconfigured data layers that quantify and integrate multiple risk factors..

MapDash is a robust and interactive location intelligence platform that integrates critical insights related to weather projections, natural hazard likelihood, climate-related building code scores, flood zones, wildland-urban interface fire risk, and more. Users simply need to zoom to a location on the map and toggle on the data layers most relevant to their particular project - no data sourcing, coding, or data science required. Within minutes, developers can visualize climate risk summaries for any site, enabling them to meet consumer demand for low climate risk properties while optimizing their own company growth.

As climate change accelerates, informed real estate development matters more than ever. Get in touch with Datastory to learn how MapDash can power smarter decisions, grounded in data.