One in ten homes was affected by natural disaster in 2021, with nearly $57 billion in property damage reported, says the 2021 Climate Change Catastrophe Report from CoreLogic. The report also found reconstruction costs have shown a meaningful increase over the last two years. This has left homeowners and insurers alike struggling to keep up as climate change causes extreme catastrophic weather events to increase in frequency and impact.
CoreLogic’s report examines the impact from four perils: Wildfires, hurricanes, severe weather and winter storms.
According to the report, wildfires caused $1.46 billion in property damage and impacted 4,101 homes in 2021. The Dixie Fire alone burned nearly one million acres of land and became the second largest wildfire in California history. The report estimates the reconstruction cost value associated with wildfires in 2021 at $0.73 billion.
Climate change has affected the temperature of the ocean, which has led to more frequent, destructive tropical cycle activity. In 2021, CoreLogic found hurricanes impacted over 1.2 million homes, causing $33 billion in property damage with a reconstruction value of $395.39 billion.
CoreLogic found severe weather caused $7.46 billion in property damage in 2021, with a reconstruction cost value of $123.7 billion. These storms, which include the deadly Midwest tornado outbreak on December 10 and 11, 2021, impacted 563,627 homes.
The 2021 central U.S. freeze, which famously took a huge toll on parts of Texas, revealed a lot of weaknesses when it came to winter preparedness. Wall and ceiling insulation, better windows and better protected pipes were all needs exposed by the freeze. Overall, according to the report, 12,764,941 homes were impacted by winter storms in 2021. Those storms caused a reported $15 billion in property damage with a reconstruction cost of $2.27 trillion.
To combat the increasing risk of extreme weather, CoreLogic’s report suggests the following:
You can download the full results of CoreLogic’s 2021 Climate Change Catastrophe Report here.
