Zillow used to show climate risk scores on every listing—now, thanks to pressure from the real estate industry, they’re gone.

BY FAST COMPANY

Credit: onzon/Adove Stock

Until recently, when you looked at a house for sale on Zillow, you could see property-specific scores for the risk of flooding, wildfires, wind from storms and hurricanes, extreme heat, and air quality. The numbers came from First Street, a nonprofit that uses peer-reviewed methodologies to calculate “climate risk.” But Zillow recently removed those scores after pressure from CRMLS, one of the large real-estate listing services that supplies its data.

“The reality is these models have been around for over five years,” says Matthew Eby, CEO of First Street, which also provides its data to sites like Realtor.com and Redfin. (Zillow started displaying the information in 2024, but Realtor.com incorporated First Street’s “Flood Scores” in 2020.) “And what’s happened is the market’s gotten very tight. And now they’re looking for ways to try and make it easier to sell homes at the expense of homebuyers.”

The California Regional MLS, like others across the country, controls the database that feeds real estate listings to sites like Zillow. The organization said in a statement to The New York Times that it was “suspicious” after seeing predictions of high flood risk in areas that hadn’t flooded in the past. When Fast Company asked for an example of a location, they pointed to a neighborhood in Huntington Beach—but that area actually just flooded last week.

In a statement, First Street said that it stands behind the accuracy of its scores. “Our models are built on........

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