Last month RealtyTrac released its first-ever ranking of “all U.S. counties based on the prevalence of man-made environmental hazards,” and Denver landed in the top five. And while the California-based company describes itself as one of the nation’s “leading authorities” in real estate and housing data, its list is one of the most misleading and useless contrivances you will ever find.
And at least partly bogus, too, as we shall see.
The ranking is supposedly based on the prevalence of air pollution, Superfund and brownfield sites, former drug labs, and “polluters” — that last measure based on the Environmental Protection Agency’s toxic release inventory. And it generated news stories,
You’d think Denver were swimming in swill.
Just one problem: RealtyTrac screwed up. It used data from an air-quality monitor in another state when ranking Denver, according to Regional Air Quality Council executive director Ken Lloyd. Lloyd told me he’d been perplexed by the ranking from the outset, and his office contacted RealtyTrac for the underlying data. It showed Denver violating the federal standard for fine particulates on a regular basis, when Denver never does.
How about that, RealtyTrac?
“There are several different measurements of air quality,” Daren Blomquist, vice president at RealtyTrac, told me, “and the one that seems to be problematic was pulling from the wrong air-quality station” — in fact, from one in Alaska.
Blomquist assured me they are combing through data to make sure there aren’t other mistakes and will release a revised ranking when finished.
But why bother? Even when it’s accurate, the ranking will not reflect actual risk for the vast majority of the nation’s homeowners. Most face zero exposure to toxic materials from Superfund or brownfield sites, or from a house blocks away that was once a drug lab.
Air pollution is another matter, but nearly every big city has trouble meeting some air standard. (Denver’s issue is ozone, yet it is nowhere near the most polluted city even on that score.)
“Our goal is to draw attention to some things that are affecting home value that maybe some people don’t think of,” he said.
But in what sense are these factors affecting home prices? As Blomquist previously acknowledged in a company press release, prices “over the past year and five years [are] stronger in the 50 housing markets with the highest prevalence of man-made hazards” than elsewhere.
A RealtyTrac ranking of markets with the highest natural hazards — earthquakes, floods, tornadoes, hurricanes — found a similar pattern.
“It actually seems to be that some of the higher-risk areas are some of the highest-price areas,” he told me. Which only goes to show that beach-front property and Silicon Valley are still desirable places to live, even with hurricanes and fault lines.
It remains to be seen how far Denver falls in the revised rankings. It does have Superfund sites and former drug labs, and of course ozone. And yet people keep moving here — no doubt because Denver remains, like most cities in America, a healthy place to live from any mature perspective.
Not that staying healthy is a given. To do so, you might try to avoid the worst “man-made environmental hazards” — you know, Marlboros, those nachos they serve at sporting events, double cheeseburgers with bacon, and loaded handguns in the vicinity of hard liquor and New Year’s Eve festivities.
E-mail Vincent Carroll at vcarroll@denverpost.com.
