Front Line: Climate Change Concerns Begin to Take Center Stage

Many executives are increasingly weighing the impact of environmental changes and catastrophic weather — which already have devastated communities — on their businesses and future needs. Examples include the millions of acres that have been scorched in California and Colorado this year, and hurricane damage in the Gulf States. Louisiana, for example, faced five cyclones in 2020, causing residents to flee the state and perhaps never return home.

Such concerns are outlined in detail in a report released recently from the Urban Land Institute (ULI) and Heitman entitled Climate Risk and Real Estate: Emerging Practices for Market Assessment. It finds that investors have moved from assessing risk for individual properties to deciding whether to pull out of entire cities.

“Leading real estate investment managers and institutional investors are increasingly recognizing climate risk as a core real estate issue that is beginning to affect their decisions at the market level as well as at the asset level,” according to the study.

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