Youtube creator Johnny Benoit recently made a thoroughly informative video: Will Your French Dream Home Still Make Sense in 2045? AI summarized the video’s core message by saying:
“Climate change is reshaping what makes a (French) property a good purchase… Buyers should evaluate not just the building, but what the ground and environment have planned for it over the coming decades to avoid purchasing risky properties.“
Now – if you’re looking at buying a property specifically in France and thinking about how climate change should be influencing your decision, I made a summary of the helpful recommendations and references he compiled, with a couple extras I thought might be useful here.
But… for the rest of you who live on planet Earth, and also plan to be alive for the next 20-50+ years… Whether you rent or own, when investing either time or money in a property in the age of climate change, you’re probably looking to avoid something that’s going to be ruined not-so-far down the road by climate complications. Why? Well, it’s probably not a great investment.
So, the premise of prevention is simple, right? Do your research and due diligence beforehand, so you can live in/buy something that doesn’t come with those risks. Duh!
Avoiding the problem…
Sure, now let’s look at the example of clay soils. Clay soils contract during dry seasons and expand when water returns, causing differential settlement, cracked walls, structural damage in buildings. And with increased temperature fluctuation and changes in precipitation patterns (i.e. climate change), you get increased damage.
In the example of France, clay shrink-swell is the second-most-costly natural hazard in France after flooding (Météo France, Wiley), and is a particularly important residential-property risk, with the damage caused by clay shrink-swell concerning “essentially individual houses” in insurance reports (CCR).
So, obviously, just don’t buy a house on clay soil… easy, problem solved! Except that, with an estimated 12-15 million detached houses standing in medium/high exposure zones covering ~55% of mainland France, that might be easier said than done.
And wait a second. Aren’t we, as a world, experiencing a global housing crisis? I mean, UN-Habitat says we are. Their 2026 World Cities Report describes a global housing crisis affecting billions of people, driven by a combination of inadequate supply, rising costs, urbanization, displacement and underinvestment.
… is not a viable solution.
If the answer to climate risk is “just don’t buy that house,” well… I am here to let you know that doesn’t actually help very much. While climate change makes properties more vulnerable, with housing already scarce and expensive for many people, abandoning every vulnerable property isn’t a practical solution – in fact, I’d say it’s not even realistic.
Less than 5% of public climate adaptation funding between 2016-2021 reached Least Developed Countries (LDCs) even though they are the most vulnerable to climate impacts (Life-AR). Globally speaking, the “just don’t live there” approach only works for a specific group of people… not to mention, it also overlooks more than 1.1 billion people living in informal settlements and slums (UN-Habitat), many of whom are already exposed to climate risks and have limited ability to relocate.
And what happens to all those poor, climate-cursed houses that already exist? Do they just become sad, crumbling sacrifices to the relentless, all-powerful weather gods and goddesses? And what happens to all the people who need a place to live? Do we just build more “risk-free” homes (cutting down more trees, destroying more wildlife habitat, pouring oil over the fire of our already quite hot-and-steamy climate problems)? Yeah, um, how about not?
Mitigating risk and adapting to climate change is possible, necessary, and effective – and it can be mundane or creative, depending on your preference.
While many humans are shaking in our boots trying to predict what the four horsemen of the clim-apocalypse are doing, we can also see their visit as an opportunity to innovate, adapt, and dare I say… regenerate? Based on the climate concerns mentioned in the video referenced above, I am putting together some resources as an exploration of some of the ways humans are already doing exactly that. More soon!
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