2 minute readOne of residential real estate’s tried and true narratives is that people quickly, almost reflexively, predictably forget.
That truism has reliably held true, and will continue to do so. Until it doesn’t.
Natural hazards, in particular. However devastating and however likely they are to recur with increasing ferocity in the future, they never prove to stifle demand nor valuations for real estate in affected areas. The narrative, every real estate and land strategy executive will tell you, is that property values and natural disasters never ultimately correlate. Amnesia inoculates properties from natural hazard risk – it’s always been the case, and why wouldn’t it always be so?
The past few post-Covid years may yet prove out the vulnerability of narratives and truisms of all kinds. The Big Picture host Like many countries, a “graying” of the population will become a concern in the United States. By 2060, it is expected that 95 million Americans will be over 65. But the share of those 18 and under will also continue to grow (albeit at a much slower pace) from 74 million people in 2020 to 80 million in 2060. – Visual Capitalist So, will the time-tested narrative that people forget, and that demand for properties considered in harm’s way of Mother Nature’s wrath will continue to spool upward as if nothing bad will ever happen again? Or has the future arrived, perhaps ahead of schedule for at least the residential land strategy stakeholders who’d like everything to continue as they always have? Early in life, the future could never come too soon. Two older siblings had privileges and were “in the loop” in a way I could only envy. Validation, full regard, impact … these were tightly-guarded experiences only an agonizingly slow-unfolding future would someday release. Now, of course, it’s the opposite. More and more, it feels as though the future arrives ahead of schedule, and nearly always with the effect of chipping or ripping away at any sense of having things figured out and well-oriented for what’s still to come. Actually, however it feels, we learn that the future arrives when it does. Precisely never late nor early. That may make for a more boring headline, and in many cases, the plain facts, evidence, and data don’t lend themselves to catchy catch-phrases, or as New York Times columnist David Brooks refers to as “performative” “cotton candy media concoction” attention-grabbers.
