Climate Solutions in Real Estate: Tackling Risk, Affordability, and Insurance

In this episode of the Propcast, Louisa is joined by John Rogers, Chief Innovation Officer for CoreLogic and Kirby Brendsel, Flagstar Bank’s VP, Environmental, Social, & Governance (ESG) and Sustainability Director, where they discuss all things climate and housing affordability, and the solutions that are out there to help solve the issues! 

John and Kirby explained the importance of providing data and analytics around climate risk to allow companies to measure the financial impact of climate change up to the year 2050, thus helping companies, cities, and governments to put in place mitigation plans.   

Tune into this episode to hear more about how climate solutions can help with mitigation, housing affordability and insurance, and how our guest’s collaboration create a rising tide that lifts all ships. 

Companies mentioned 

New York Communities Corp Inc 

IBM 

Deloitte  

LMRE’S 2023 Salary Report 

IPCC 

Episode Highlights 

My big advice for anyone would be that if you're passionate; follow your passion, go for the things that you want to do, or things that you can make a difference on, even on a small scale related to sustainability. – Kirby 

We provided something called ‘climate risk analytics’ which is an insight that allows companies to measure model and mitigate the financial impact of climate change – John  

It’s all about using data, improving your data, and capturing your data to make sound strategic decisions that helps you drive things forward – Kirby  

The chef scientist of NASA said to us that he’d never expected to get to this level of granularity in his lifetime – John  

Key Takeaways  

How Flagstar and CoreLogic are working together to help address the issue of climate change and housing affordability 

John explains the ‘average annual loss’ which CoreLogic provides that is a ratio of a building’s risk in terms of reconstruction costs, allowing companies to understand their financial risk 

Kirby explains how important the use of data is in making strategic decisions around climate and sustainability 

The opportunity in cities that have a high climate risk to use CoreLogic’s analytics platform 

The guests discuss the importance of educating people on the long term impact of climate change 

John discusses how the needs of CoreLogic’s customers change and how they accommodate for this 

About our guests 

John Rogers  

John Rogers holds the role of Chief Innovation Officer for CoreLogic and is responsible for the R&D. From driving new solutions that understand the impacts to the real estate economy due to climate change, to ground-breaking models that identify suitable land for affordable housing development, the R&D group tackles major housing issues and works with many clients across the housing industry to drive growth and mitigate risk on their book of business.    

Prior to joining CoreLogic, John was a Partner with IBM Global Business Services where he focused on the delivery of large multi-million transformational programs for the financial sector both in the United Kingdom and Australia. Prior to this, John worked as a consultant for Itim Consulting, a boutique management firm based in London. John’s primary role was as a program manager on a number of assignments delivering global solutions within retail, pharmaceuticals, logistics and information services industries.  

John earned a bachelor’s degree from Unive