Climate Migration and Real Estate Investment Decision-Making

Report Summary: How do real estate investors account for climate migration today? How does climate migration impact real estate valuation and investment? What tools and strategies can be leveraged to assess and address climate migration and its impacts on markets?

The Urban Land Institute (ULI) has partnered with Heitman, a global real estate investment management firm, over the past three years to conduct research at the intersection of climate risk and real estate. This third report in the series examines climate migration through the lens of real estate investment decision-making. While investors increasingly recognize the urgency that climate change poses through both physical and transitional risks and are beginning to factor climate risk into decision-making processes, climate migration is an emerging facet not yet fully considered in the investment landscape.

Climate Migration and Real Estate Investment Decision-Making demonstrates how climate-related migration may impact the real estate sector in several ways, creating significant challenges for investors and the broader community of land use professionals. Drawing on insights from investors and aligned professionals, the report reviews how investors are beginning to define and address climate migration-related risks. The report presents a 2-step investment decision-making framework for analyzing key climate migration-related risk factors and urges real estate investors to:

1. Build their capacity to pinpoint migration-related and broader market-level investment risks
2. Actively work to understand and support climate adaptation needs within key markets

Bringing climate migration into the broader array of climate risk and investment management strategies is pivotal. By doing so, real estate can become a proactive leader in making places and people more resilient to the impacts of climate change.

Also in the ULI-Heitman Climate Risk series:

• Climate Risk and Real Estate Investment Decision-Making
• Climate Risk and Real Estate: Emerging Practices for Market Assessment