Zillow, the nation’s largest real estate listing website, has removed extreme weather risk data meant to help buyers figure out if the biggest purchase of their life is particularly susceptible to floods, high winds or wildfires.

I am constantly looking at possible real estate purchases, particularly waterfront, as well as monitoring property that we own. I do a pretty good job of analyzing flood risk by looking at the historical data and analyzing the topography in the surrounding area for elevation differences. The water must flow somewhere and it will take the path of least resistance, so if your side of a river is higher than the other riverbank, probability is on your side that you will be OK in a flood, if there is enough room across the way for the water to go. Note that this is similar to flood mitigation strategies of creating a "shelf" for water to sit in flood times, so that it does not impact surrounding structures.

Several properties I have looked at appear to have overblown risk profiles based on the extreme weather risk data. I have been very tempted to buy one of them, which has sat on the market for some time, now much reduced in price. But on first glance, particularly by an uneducated consumer of the data, it looks as though the property is in a raging flood plain, when in reality it has a FEMA LOMR showing it to be 17' above the flood plain, and a significant shelf on the far bank for water to flow to. But perception in everything when it comes to sales, and people searching listings on Realtor.com or Zillow won't get past the posted with little explanation extreme weather risk data, and will never come see the listing or get educated on the actual risk and the understanding of possibility vs probability. I don't want to inherit the manufactured risk of impeded resale because of the flood perception risk imposed by the company that compiles the data.

For months now, I've been telling DH that putting this information, flood projections that has little to do with real risk in terms of probability, is Zillow and other websites inviting a class action lawsuit from those whose values have been tanked by the easy link to this data. As applicable to where one buys a house would be crime data, and typically that you have to search for on your own. The point of Zillow is to make it easier for buyers to become aware of properties for sale or rent, not to provide data that can skew the desire to even look at the property.

IP,
who has looked at many properties and found the data provided to be less than 100% accurate, now choosing to evaluate the data only after determining a wish to pursue the purchase