Episode summary
ICE leaders on how climate risk affects housing affordability
HousingWire Daily
· · Hosts: Sarah Wheeler · Guests: Larry Lawrence, Andy Walden
Summary
The conversation argued that climate risk is no longer a distant housing-market issue; it is already affecting mortgage performance, insurance costs, and home values. The guests said ICE is trying to make those risks visible at the property and loan level so lenders, insurers, and homeowners can make better decisions with more precise data.
One guest said ICE research found that after wildfire, hurricane, or flood events, short-term mortgage delinquency probabilities rise sharply in the next 1 to 3 months, and that high-risk loans can carry elevated severe-delinquency risk over the longer term. The other guest added that property insurance has become a major affordability pressure, citing a 70% increase over the last six years and noting that higher insurance costs are associated with a greater chance of falling behind on mortgage payments.
They also discussed how climate risk is changing buyer behavior. In ICE’s 2026 borrower insight survey, three-quarters of homeowners said climate was part of their homebuying decision, and 40% called it very or extremely important. The guests said the biggest misconception is that this is a future problem; in their view, it is already affecting delinquencies, home-price appreciation, and portfolio risk today.
Key takeaways
- The guests said wildfire, hurricane, and flood events can push mortgage delinquency probabilities higher within 1 to 3 months.
- One guest said property insurance costs are up 70% over the last six years and are now a major mortgage-payment burden.
- ICE’s 2026 borrower insight survey found that three-quarters of homeowners say climate affects homebuying decisions, with 40% calling it very or extremely important.
- The guests said flood risk is often underinsured: 5.3 million U.S. single-family homes have 100-year flood risk, but only 15% have flood insurance.
- The guests said flood-prone homes show slower annual appreciation, with a 0.2 to 0.4% annual drag and $31 billion in lost residential value since 2013.
Notable quotes
“our research team analyzed mortgage delinquency patterns following hundreds of sort of extreme weather events over the last 14 years”
“On average, what we see is that after a wildfire, hurricane or flood event, short-term mortgage delinquency probabilities increase substantially in the following three 1 to 3 months”
“It's up 70% over the last six years. It's the single fastest growing subcomponent of a of a mortgage payment”
How the episode opens
Welcome everyone. Today we're discussing a critical intersection and that's climate risk and housing affordability. What we're really exploring is with extreme weather events becoming more frequent and severe, how is this reshaping the mortgage market and homeowner decisions? To answer that question, I'm joined today by Larry Lawrence from Ice Climate and Andy Walden from the ICE Mortgage Data Side. Welcome to you guys. Thank you so much.
Thanks for having us. — We're so I'm so glad to have you both on. Uh before we dive into the data part of this, I'd love to hear a little bit about what your teams do and what motivates your work. So Larry, let's start with you. What is Ice Climate and what gets you excited about this space?
All right, lucky me. Um so I'm Larry Lawrence. Uh ice climate is the climate and geospace geospatial intelligence division of ICE.
We're focused on bringing the same kind of transparency to climate risk analytics or extreme weather analytics if you want to call it that that ICE has brought to other parts the financial markets over the last few decades. Um, we're a team of data scientists, climate, and financial modelers focused on building large data sets of location specific information. Thinking about where buildings are located, where offices are located, where data centers are located, a topical thing.
And then we link those to the financial assets that our clients own and help them think about how these different types of risks, whether it's extreme weather today, happening now, or in the future, um could potentially have an impact on the revenue of these different assets. Our mission is really to help lenders, insurers, homeowners make better decisions by understanding these risks, these exposures at the property level, the loan level, and at the asset level for the balance sheets that they that they manage.
From the episode’s captions: roughly the first two minutes, lightly cleaned. Keep watching on YouTube →
Topics
- climate risk
- housing affordability
- sustainable finance data
- mortgage market research
- mortgage affordability
Companies and tickers mentioned
- ICE
- Intercontinental Exchange
- HousingWire
Watch the episode
Watch “ICE leaders on how climate risk affects housing affordability” on YouTube
Summary, takeaways and quote selection by Octagon. Quotes are short excerpts; the full conversation is in the episode.
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