Climate change could make Lower Mainland housing more expensive: report
Posted December 17, 2016 9:47 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – Will waterfront property soon be losing its appeal?
A new report says climate change is putting billions of dollars worth of local real estate at risk and could make housing more expensive.
SFU’s Adaptation to Climate Change Team says that $25-billion of existing real estate is at risk from rising sea levels in Vancouver alone.
Professor Deborah Harford with school points to a recent New York Times article on property in Miami as a direction we might take here.
“What realtors there are finding is that buyers are starting to say ‘look, how far away from the water am I, because I don’t want to be exposed’ — so that very valuable real estate investment area could see a collapse, something that would dwarf the dot com collapse in 2000.
She says all levels of government need to update codes and standards, and speed up the redrawing of flood plain maps.
