The U.S. brokerage and online real estate marketplace company Redfin has announced that it is introducing air quality risk data to its listings.
The data comes via a partnership with climate risk data provider First Street and covers nearly every property listed on the portal.
“Redfin wants to ensure that every single person searching for a home has the information they need to understand climate risks,” said Redfin Senior Vice President of Product and Design Ariel Dos Santos. “Air pollution is an important consideration as poor air quality becomes more frequent due to climate threats such as wildfire smoke.”
Redfin claims that the number of "poor quality air days" in the western part of the country surged by as much as 477% between 2000 and 2021 thanks to wildfire smoke. The Seattle-based brokerage conducted a survey which claims that 9% of recent U.S. home sellers cited concern about the impact of climate change as a reason for their move.
Redfin is one of the top ten brokerages in the United States by transaction volume. Thanks to the unique market dynamics of the North American housing market the company has become one of the United States' most popular portal sites in its own right. It competes for traffic with the likes of Zillow, Realtor.com and Homes.com.
Like all American portals, Redfin is engaged in a race to embellish its listings with more and more data. Prior to this week's announcement, it added zoning info and climate risk in 2022 and 2021 respectively.