A homeowner selling in a wildfire-exposed area has two concerns: a lower price, and a listing that does not reach a sale. This paper studies both and separates a home’s own modeled wildfire exposure from that of its surroundings. A simple valuation model shows why price regressions on risk scores need not identify a neighborhood cost. In 1.5 million sales from 2018 to 2021, higher tract- and county-average exposure is associated with prices about 4 and 8 percent lower per standard deviation. Both associations become smaller, with intervals that include zero, after controlling for the tract-level share of property value in structures rather than land. In about one million California listings from 2021 to 2025, higher tract-average exposure is associated with a 2.5 percentage-point lower probability of a recorded sale within six months, against 0.6 point for the home’s own exposure. This association changes little with the same control and largely remains at a one-year horizon.
Real Estate Department