Miami real estate professionals are finally starting to acknowledge the serious impact climate change is having and will have on the entire South Florida market, the Miami Herald’s recent Miami-Dade County Real Estate Study confirmed. But are they doing enough to help warn everyone else?

The impending effects of climate change on Miami’s market have been evident for years. However, despite experts warning of the ultimate ineffectiveness of flood pumps, as well as projections showing much of South Florida falling into the sea by 2060, the city’s real estate professionals have been slow to take it seriously.

As early as last year, a majority of industry insiders still didn’t consider climate change much of a threat. According to the Herald, 56 percent of real estate professionals in 2015 agreed they didn’t see climate change or sea level rise as a serious concern as it regarded the local real estate market.

They’re singing a different tune this year. Well, some of them.

A new perspective

In this year’s report, the Herald found that 65 percent of real estate professionals now catalog climate change and the rise of sea level as serious issues facing the local market.

However, even with the increase, doubt is still ubiquitous around the local market, according to one professional.

“Nobody seems to be concerned here – not the politicians, not the developers and certainly not all of the buyers,” said Morris Massre, a Realtor with All Luxury Miami.

And he’s right – at least about the buyers.

Seventy-eight percent of survey respondents told the Herald that their clients aren’t mentioning climate change or sea level rise as an issue. While that’s down 2 percentage points from last year, it’s still a sizeable majority.

But Massre believes the blasé attitudes of buyers may be a reflection of the professionals they’re working with.

Client see, client do

“Realtors would be crazy to try and sell someone a house or condo and then tell them before closing that it will probably be underwater in about 20 years,” he said. “They would go out of my business.”

Massre pointed out that Miami real estate agents are uniquely positioned to inform the public on the seriousness of climate change and seal level rise, and what it will mean for Miami and South Florida in the decades to come.

“It is in my power to warn every one of my clients now, and if they choose not to heed my advice then so be it,” he said, adding, “at least I gave ample warning.”