CoreLogic Announces Riskiest Places to Live in the U.S.

Property data and analytics company CoreLogic put together a top ten list of the riskiest places to live in the U.S. based on susceptibility to natural disasters.

“With exposure to hurricanes and inland floods Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana, emerged as the riskiest place for property owners due to damages from natural disasters,” the company wrote. “Areas on or near the U.S. Gulf Coast are particularly vulnerable to potential catastrophe damages, both currently and in the future.”

Climate and environmental property data has become a hot commodity for developers, investors, owners, lenders, and insurers.  Getting data can be expensive because it frequently sits in the hands of private companies that understandably want to make a profit. Madison Condon, an associate professor at the Boston University School of Law, has written recently, for example, that climate risk data is “limited and expensive to access” and also opaque, making verifying its accuracy or potential biases next to impossible.

Analysis like this shows why there’s an increasingly high premium on such data. Having the right information can make the difference between a successful business strategy and watching money sail on an outgoing tide or get reduced to charred rubble.

“CoreLogic’s Climate Risk Analytics: Composite Risk Score (CRA Composite Risk Score) identifies U.S. areas that are currently at risk and stress-tests natural disaster risks over the next 30 years across various future climate scenarios,” the company writes. “These scenarios include a base where conditions do not change; a progressively worsening climate is noted as “Scenario 8.5,” RCP (Representative Concentration Pathways) and is an example of what could happen in the future. The RCP 8.5 projections in this report include climate-related risks to residential properties, assuming that carbon-dioxide emissions continue to rise throughout the 21st century.”

Here are the ten riskiest places in 2023, according to CoreLogic:

1. Plaquemines, Louisiana — (Primary Risks: Hurricane, Inland Flood)
2. Jefferson, Louisiana — (Primary Risks: Hurricane, Inland Flood)
3. Monroe, Florida — (Primary Risk: Hurricane)
4. McMullen, Texas — (Primary Risk: Inland Flood)
5. Orleans, Louisiana — (Primary Risk: Hurricane)
6. Lincoln, West Virginia — (Primary Risk: Inland Flood)
7. Camas, Idaho — (Primary Risk: Wildfire)
8. Van Buren, Iowa — (Primary Risk: Inland Flood)
9. Crockett, Texas — (Primary Risk: Inland Flood)
10. Carter, Missouri — (Primary Risk: Inland Flood)

While considering residential, the data would also suggest that businesses in such locations would also be at high risk of damage from environmental factors.