Wildfires and home prices: Are they related?August 31, 2005Do wildfires influence the housing market? Is it a consideration when people buy or build? Geoffrey Donovan, an economist at the USDA Forest Service's Pacific Northwest Research Station in Portland, Ore., and his colleagues collaborated with the Colorado Springs Fire Department in Colorado to answer these questions. The fire department developed a computer model to rate the wildfire risk of 35,000 parcels in the city's wildland-urban interface. Each parcel was given a fire risk rating: low, medium, high, very high, or extreme. The information was posted in 2002 on a fire department Web site accessible to homeowners who wanted to determine the risk rating of their home and learn how to reduce fire risk.
"We found that before the wildfire risk ratings were made available," says Donovan, "houses at higher risk from wildfire had higher sales prices than similar houses with a lower wildfire risk. This result seemed counterintuitive, until we considered that factors that increase a home's wildfire risk, such as being located on a ridge, can also have desirable effects such as better views. "However," he continues, "after the wildfire risk ratings were released, we no longer observed a relationship between wildfire risk and housing prices. This was largely due to a change in tastes for flammable building materials. "For example, before wildfire risk ratings were released, a wood roof added nearly $12,000 to the home price, whereas after wildfire risk ratings were made available, houses with wood roofs sold for $5,000 less than houses with less flammable roofs. It appears that the Fire Department's program successfully changed homeowner's attitudes concerning wildfire risk." Wildfires continue to destroy homes as more and more people live closer to wildland areas. Nationally, wildfires destroyed an average of 2,500 homes in 2002-2003; up from an average of 900 burned between 1985 and 1994. USDA Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Research St | |||||||||||||||||||||
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Related Wildfires Current Events and Wildfires News Articles Where there's wildfire smoke, there's toxicity The health threat to city dwellers posed by Southern California wildfires like those of November 2008 may have been underestimated by officials. Hospital visits for respiratory illnesses spiked during Southern California wildfires Raging wildfires that engulfed Southern California earlier this decade not only destroyed neighborhoods laying in their path, they also caused significant health problems for many who lived outside the fires' reach. When it comes to forest soil, wildfires pack 1-2 punch For decades, scientists and resource managers have known that wildfires affect forest soils, evidenced, in part, by the erosion that often occurs after a fire kills vegetation and disrupts soil structure. Wildfires Cause Ozone Pollution to Violate Health Standards, New Study Shows Wildfires can boost ozone pollution to levels that violate U.S. health standards, a new study concludes. International Field Campaign examines impact of beetle kill on Rocky Mountain weather, air quality Mountain pine beetles appear to be doing more than killing large swaths of forests in the Rocky Mountains. Scientists suspect they are also altering local weather patterns and air quality. Pine Bark Beetles Affecting More than Forests Pine bark beetles appear to be doing more than killing large swaths of forests in the Rocky Mountains. Scientists suspect they are also altering local weather patterns and air quality. Stanford's 'autonomous' helicopters teach themselves to fly Stanford computer scientists have developed an artificial intelligence system that enables robotic helicopters to teach themselves to fly difficult stunts by watching other helicopters perform the same maneuvers. Thawing permafrost likely to boost global warming The thawing of permafrost in northern latitudes, which greatly increases microbial decomposition of carbon compounds in soil, will dominate other effects of warming in the region and could become a major force promoting the release of carbon dioxide and thus further warming, according to a new assessment in the September 2008 issue of BioScience. Study: Future snowmelt in West twice as early as expected; threatens ecosystems and water reserves According to a new study, global warming could lead to larger changes in snowmelt in the western United States than was previously thought, possibly increasing wildfire risk and creating new water management challenges for agriculture, ecosystems and urban populations. Better regional monitoring of CO2 needed as global levels continue rising Monitoring Earth's rising greenhouse gas levels will require a global data collection network 10 times larger than the one currently in place in order to quantify regional progress in emission reductions, according to a new research commentary by University of Colorado and NOAA researchers appearing in the April 25 issue of Science. More Wildfires Current Events and Wildfires News Articles |
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