Marketing real-estate in areas ravaged by hurricanes, fires, floods and landslides can be tricky—especially when it comes to striking a balance between promotion and reality
By
Nancy Keates Wall Street Journal
March 16, 2025 8:00 pm ET
“Welcome to your dream renovation project!”
That’s the pitch on the listing for a five-bedroom oceanfront mansion selling for $6.5 million on Sanibel Island, an area on the west coast of Florida that was ravaged by Hurricane Ian in 2022, and then hit again by hurricanes Helene and Milton in 2024.
The home sustained water damage when the roof failed during one of the storms and the structure should be raised up a little, says the listing agent Yvonne Burnham of DomainRealty. She says “most of the value is in the land,” which is worth about $4 million, because it is an acre with direct access to the beach, with expansive ocean views, she says.
This five-bedroom oceanfront mansion is listed for $6.5 million on Sanibel Island, Fla. The island was ravaged by Hurricane Ian in 2022, and then hit again by hurricanes Helene and Milton in 2024. Photo: VisualPRO LLC
There was water damage in the home from when the roof failed. Photo: VisualPRO LLC
Hurricanes, fires, landslides and floods have all taken a toll on some of the country’s most sought-after living locations, from white sandy beaches in Florida to breathtaking peninsulas in California and the mountains of North Carolina. Real estate that used to be an easy sell has now become trickier to gussy up, especially when the smell and sight of charred buildings is still fresh or neighborhood businesses are still closed years after disaster has struck.
Making a sale in these areas even more difficult is an increased awareness of the risks of climate change. According to a Redfin-commissioned Ipsos survey of 2,000 homeowners and renters in September 2024, 56% of Millennials and 50% of Gen Z say climate change affects where they choose to live. However, only 31% of Boomers and 40% of Gen X cared, says Daryl Fairweather, Redfin’s chief economist. These results mirror the results of a report Redfin released in 2022 showing home buyers with access to flood-risk data bid on lower-risk homes.
When it comes to areas hit by natural disasters, the balance between marketing and truth can be delicate. To best serve their sellers, and to make the offerings more attractive to buyers, real-estate agents are deploying a range of strategies to try to show homes in a positive light. But they usually point out, often toward the bottom of the listing description, sometimes subtly, that there might be some “issues.”
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The wildfires that devastated Pacific Palisades, Malibu and Altadena in January created an especially tricky challenge for real-estate agents. Ruslan Shkurenko, an agent with Carolwood Estates, has a two-bedroom, 1,708-square-foot listing in the Pacific Palisades that is for sale for $2.35 million. The marketing touts it as being located in “one of Los Angeles’s most desirable neighborhoods,” but that language will have to change, he says.
he listing was still up over two months after the house burned down in the Pacific Palisades fire in January. Photo: Zillow
The house in the Zillow listing, after the fire. Photo: CALFIRE
In the Portuguese Bend Beach Club neighborhood of Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif., one of the most impacted areas of continuing landslides on the Palos Verdes Peninsula, the marketing blurb for a $2.599 million, two-bedroom, 1,159-square-foot home starts with “Location, location, location.” According to the listing, the home’s benefits include a 180-degree view of the ocean and the fact that plans to remodel and fix minor land-movement damages have been submitted to the city. However, the listing fails to mention that much of the neighborhood currently has no power or gas service, since it was cut off for safety reasons by the utility companies last year. The house will be sold “as-is” but it is unclear if it has had power and gas restored and the listing agent declined to comment.
Nearby, in an area of Rolling Hills where the risk of land movement also prompted a shutoff of gas and power to some of the homes, a four-bedroom, 3,165-square-foot house that is listed for $3 million is touted as an “opportunity to go completely off Grid and Green.” After sitting on the market since June, the price was lowered by around $1 million from its original listing price of $4.15 million. It is currently in contingency, which means certain terms must be satisfied before the deal can close. The potential buyer isn’t an investor but someone who plans on living there, says the listing agent Leslie Stetson of Berkshire Hathaway HomeService.
Stetson says it was tough selling the property without utilities, and that she has never advised anyone to buy or not in an area where there is land movement. “I’m not a geologist,’ she says. However, the house is in a peaceful area with stunning views, she says. “There are people who are willing to take a risk,” she says. “A person is free to make any decision they want.”
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Some real-estate agents in the landslide area are taking a more hands-on approach to selling damaged properties by getting estimates and lining up contractors for measures they say could make homes physically less vulnerable to land movement.
Charlie Raine is the listing agent for a $2.25 million, five-bedroom, 4,000-square-foot house in Portuguese Bend, also one of the hardest hit by the recent Palos Verdes Peninsula landslides. The Tuscan-style estate, with ocean views and a rich history, saw its front outdoor space cave in from the fissures. To address that issue up front, Raine included in the marketing blurb that the owner has “fought back” by installing what are called “helical” piers, which seem to be working, the listing says.
This estate with ocean views and a rich history is in Portuguese Bend, one of the hardest hit by the recent Palos Verdes Peninsula landslides. It is listed for $2.25 million. An area in front caved in from the fissures. The owner has installed what are called ‘helical’ piers to address the home’s stability issues.Emily Cristiano, Charlie Raine (2)
Raine also points out to prospective buyers that he has had engineering plans developed for putting the home on steel beams and the plans are “available to use should the piers not suffice.” That would cost under a million dollars to implement, he says. The home, which had a price cut of $250,000 in January, hasn’t had power or gas since last summer. There are people interested, mostly for the home’s history and the character of its 100-year-old architecture. “The integrity of the design is still there and people who appreciate that can see that, but it’s still not a cheap house.” He says he tries to educate prospective buyers on the possibilities of how they can further save the home. “It’s not the end of the world,” he says.
The marketing blurb of a different home Raine is marketing in the Seaview neighborhood of Rancho Palos Verdes warned that it had been adversely affected by the land movement, but assured potential buyers that “there are methods available to retrofit the foundation and isolate the affected portion of the home from the movement.” The Seaview house has since been red tagged, meaning it is officially uninhabitable.
When showing a home that was damaged by a landslide in the Seaview neighborhood of Rancho Palos Verdes, the listing agent used a cardboard model to demonstrate how lifting a house and inserting steel I-beams could help.Adam Amengual for WSJ (3)
To help spur sales, real-estate agents in hurricane-prone areas of Florida’s west coast are positioning themselves as resources to help owners make homes more stormproof. Tiffany Burns, a real-estate adviser for Premier Sotheby’s International Realty who is based in Captiva, Fla., says her team has a list of what she calls mitigation options, like elevating the house or putting in floodgates over doors and windows, that they suggest to potential buyers.
The language of the listings in storm-struck areas can require a careful read: one stock phrase in listings on Sanibel Island and nearby Fort Myers Beach is “the house suffered no damage from recent hurricanes,” meaning the 2024 hurricanes Helene and Milton, but not necessarily 2022’s devastating Hurricane Ian, real-estate agents say. Another code term is “As Is Where Is,” which means the property is being sold as it is and limits the seller’s liability regarding the condition of the property.
Marketing is one challenge for agents in disaster-struck areas. Closing existing sales after a disaster is another.
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Marilyn C. Wright, a real-estate agent with Premier Sotheby’s in Asheville, N.C., had a listing under contract in nearby Linville, N.C., when Hurricane Helene struck in September 2024. The 5,200-square-foot, four-bedroom, stone-and-timber home, perched on over 5 acres on a ridge and built in 2007, had only generator power. It was on a road littered with fallen trees. Homes nearby had their roofs blown off. To close the deal, she had to drive to Charleston, S.C., so she could more effectively communicate since there was no internet or phone service available at the time near the listing. “All we had was AM radio,” she says. The house closed for $14 million but it was a stressful four days.
Perched on over 5 acres on a ridge in Linville, N.C., this home was under contract to sell when Hurricane Helene hit the area in September 2024. Photo: Cayton Productions
Wright says in the storm’s aftermath, the crucial element has been physically getting to the houses she had listed to see what kind of damage they sustained. To keep the prospects viable, she’s had to coordinate everything from enlisting neighbors with chain saws to remove trees to getting roofs repaired to securing propane tanks. Her connections with contractors helped her clients get things done more quickly. “People still have plans and desires and time frames, no matter what’s going on in the world,” she says. “It’s a full-court press for us.”
Roads were blocked by fallen trees throughout the area, making closings, and monitoring existing listings, especially difficult. Photo: Marilyn Wright
Art Carter, CEO of California Regional MLS, a multiple listing service with over 100,000 members, says his group has a staff of 20 people who actively police listings to make sure agents aren’t submitting items that violate the National Association of Realtors Code of Ethics, which stipulates honesty and truthfulness. Fines for violations, which can range from violating the Fair Housing Act to using copyrighted photos without permission, are between $100 and $2,500, he says. He says there has been some leeway in the areas impacted by the wildfires in California in recent months because the conditions have been so difficult, but he says the group is working to make sure the information on the listings is up to date.
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The impact of natural disasters can make selling a home even miles away difficult. Gayle Probst has a listing for a four-bedroom, 2,497-square-foot house for $1.995 million in a neighborhood called Ladera Linda, about a mile from the current active landslide affecting a part of the Seaview neighborhood on the Palos Verdes Peninsula.
This home is In Ladera Linda, about a mile from the current active landslide affecting a part of the Seaview neighborhood on the Palos Verdes Peninsula in California. The house isn’t in a slide zone.Peter McMenamim (2)
The house has only been on the market a short time, and she thinks it will sell, but it might take more time than it would have otherwise because people don’t understand the boundaries of the slide area. “People think all of Seaview is falling off the hill but it is not. It’s ridiculous,” she says.
Write to Nancy Keates at Nancy.Keates@wsj.com
Corrections & Amplifications
The photo credited to Cayton Productions was incorrectly attributed to Ryan Theede in an earlier version of this story. (Corrected on Mar. 20)
A two-bedroom, 1,708-square-foot house, shown before and after the wildfire that devastated the Pacific Palisades in January, is surrounded by burned homes.Ryan Lahiff, CALFIRE, Satellite image 2025 Maxar Technologies
The house was only partially damaged, but it is surrounded by rubble, he says. With the construction traffic that will inevitably come over the next few years, he says “it will be difficult. Everything is completely burnt down.” The seller wants to keep the house on the market, which means Shkurenko will have to figure out the appropriate price. He says he hasn’t heard from any buyers in the Palisades right now, except for bargain hunters who have called offering $400,000 for the property.
Some old, pre-disaster listings are still on real-estate sites even after the home has been destroyed. Sellers want the insurance companies to be able to access the listing images and details to see how much a house was worth, says Susan Kastner, a real-estate broker with Compass. She has a listing in Pacific Palisades that, two months after the Palisades Fire, was still showing up on Zillow as for sale for $5.959 million. It didn’t mention that the house was destroyed in the fire. “It helps also if you are selling land to have a few photos of how the house looked before the fire if they want to build it back like it was before,” she says.