In Wake of California Drought, Listings Touting Water-Efficiency Evaporate
A relative flood of home listings advertising water-conservation features in the Golden State during the worst of the California drought appears to have dried up somewhat with the rains’ return.
A relative flood of home listings advertising water-conservation features in the Golden State during the worst of the California drought appears to have dried up somewhat with the rains’ return.
After spiking from just 0.4 percent of home listings in 2011 to 1.1 percent in 2016, the share of listings statewide advertising drought-resistant features[1] fell slightly in each of the past two years, an especially wet period that largely ended the half-decade California drought. The share of listings mentioning drought-resistance fell last year from 2015 or 2016 peaks in five of the seven major regions analyzed by Zillow.
The Far Northern and Inland Southern regions – Redwood forest and Mojave Desert country, respectively – were the only regions where drought-resistance was more likely to be touted in local listings last year than in prior years. The state’s Central Coast had the highest share of listings (2.4 percent) that mentioned drought-resistance – somewhat unsurprising, given its lack of water infrastructure including dams, aqueducts and reservoirs compared to the rest of the state.
Still, drought-resistant buzzwords remain fairly widespread, if not as common as in years past. Every California county except one featured at least one 2017 listing boasting drought resistant features. The lone holdout was Alpine County, the state’s least populous, located in the heart of the Sierra Nevada mountain range just south of Lake Tahoe. Ventura County, northwest of Los Angeles, had the highest share of listings mentioning drought-resistant features, at 2.8 percent.
Many of the homes listed for sale during the worst of the drought in 2014 and 2015 may hit the market again in coming years, and they likely still retain many of the water-saving features so prominently advertised before. And as the state teeters on the brink of falling back into widespread drought conditions after a warm, dry winter, it remains to be seen if drought-resistance will again become a popular selling point for California home buyers thirsty for new listings in a parched inventory environment.
But in some respects, residents have already shown they have short memories – after years of strict water conservation efforts, the amount of water saved by urban Californians has declined rapidly in recent months.
Use the tool below to explore the frequency of drought-related terms in California by region, and how they have grown over time.
[1] Featuring the keywords “drought-resistant,” “drought-tolerant,” “drip irrigation,” and/or “low-flow.”