Journal of Property Research

From hazard to capital: Climate risk, insurability and the repricing of property and land

Physical climate risk is increasingly becoming a property-market, investment and land-use issue. Research has established that flooding and other environmental hazards can affect property prices. The next research frontier concerns how climate risk travels through the wider property system: from physical exposure and risk information to insurance, mortgage lending, collateral valuation, market liquidity, investment decisions, adaptation expenditure and land-use change.

A property may retain an observable market value while simultaneously becoming more expensive to insure, more difficult to finance, less liquid or increasingly costly to protect. Equally, investment in adaptation may alter future losses, market expectations and asset values. These mechanisms may vary substantially between residential, commercial, rural and coastal markets and across countries with different insurance systems, mortgage markets, planning regimes and institutional capacities.

This Special Issue introduces a broader hazard-to-capital perspective. It seeks research examining the mechanisms through which physical climate risk affects the economic use, valuation, financeability, insurability, investment performance and development potential of property and land.

We welcome theoretical, empirical, methodological and comparative contributions addressing questions including:

• Climate-risk repricing and market behaviour: How, when and where are flooding, coastal erosion, heat, wildfire, drought, subsidence and compound climate hazards capitalised into property and land values?

• Insurance and insurability: How do insurance premiums, exclusions, withdrawal of cover and protection gaps affect transactions, investment decisions, liquidity and property values?

• Mortgage lending and climate-sensitive collateral: How are lenders incorporating physical climate exposure into credit assessment, mortgage pricing, loan-to-value decisions and collateral management?

• Adaptation and resilience value: Do flood defences, property-level resilience, sustainable drainage, nature-based solutions and other adaptation interventions preserve or create measurable property value?

• Rural land and natural capital: How are climate hazards, catchment-scale flood management, ecosystem-service payments, agricultural adaptation and changing land-use requirements affecting rural land values and investment decisions?

• Coastal property and managed adaptation: How are sea-level rise, coastal flooding and erosion affecting property markets, development decisions, adaptation pathways, planning restrictions and managed retreat?

• Climate analytics and valuation: How can geospatial data, remote sensing, artificial intelligence, machine learning and climate scenarios improve property-risk assessment while recognising uncertainty, model risk and data limitations?

• Institutional investment and portfolio risk: How are property companies, REITs, institutional investors and asset managers incorporating physical climate risk into acquisition, pricing, asset management and disposal strategies?

• Planning, regulation and disclosure: How do climate-risk disclosure, building regulation, land-use planning, prudential policy and environmental regulation alter property-market behaviour?

• Emerging markets and the Global South: How do climate-risk transmission mechanisms operate where insurance penetration, formal mortgage finance, property data and institutional capacity are limited?

• Compound and cascading risk: How do interactions between climate hazards, infrastructure failure, insurance, credit conditions and wider economic shocks affect property and land markets?

The Special Issue particularly welcomes interdisciplinary research connecting property economics, real estate finance, valuation and land studies with climate science, insurance, banking, planning, geography and adaptation research. Comparative studies across cities, regions and countries are encouraged.

The objective is to move the property literature beyond asking whether climate risk affects prices towards understanding when, through which mechanisms, and for whom physical climate risk becomes financial and property-market risk.