Realtor.com Adds Filter Letting Buyers Sort Homes By Years Until Underwater

NORFOLK, VA — Realtor.com quietly rolled out a new search filter this week that lets shoppers rank coastal listings by projected years remaining before the property is permanently submerged, and within days it had become the most-used sort option on the site's Tidewater region page, beating out "price" and "bedrooms."

The filter, labeled "Time Left," pulls from the same sea-level-rise modeling the company already used for its climate risk scores, except now it counts down. A four-bedroom colonial two blocks from the water might read "27 years." A bungalow on the marsh might read "6."

"People kept asking us for a number they could actually plan around," said Ashley Vance, a Realtor.com product spokesperson. "A risk score is abstract. A countdown is a countdown. You can put it on a calendar."

Gary Pelham, a broker with Tidewater Premier Realty, said the filter has changed how he pitches listings entirely. He no longer describes a home's flood exposure as a downside to be managed. He leads with it.

"I had a place at four years and a place at eleven, same square footage, same school district," Pelham said. "The four-year house sold in a weekend. Buyers love a deadline. It's basically a lease with extra steps."

Denise Okafor, 41, closed last month on a three-bedroom rancher her filter results put at nine years. She said the number was, if anything, the deciding factor.

"We're not going to be able to afford waterfront anywhere else in our lifetime," Okafor said. "This way we get nine years of waterfront, then it becomes, structurally, a reef. I've started calling it a long vacation with a mortgage."

A National Association of Realtors survey released alongside the feature found that 61 percent of coastal buyers now describe flood risk as "a pricing detail" rather than a deterrent, up from 38 percent two years ago. The trade group said buyers increasingly treat homeownership less like an investment and more like a lease with a firm end date. The same survey found that flood insurance carriers have mostly stopped returning those buyers' calls.

Pelham said his agency is already testing a premium version of the tool for repeat clients: a "Time Left" filter that also recommends where to buy next, so a family can chain together consecutive countdown homes moving steadily inland, a practice he has started referring to internally as "laddering."

Realtor.com says it plans to expand the feature nationwide by next spring, with a companion tool that lets buyers filter by which of their children will be the ones dealing with it.

At press time, Okafor confirmed she had already forwarded the listing to her in-laws, who are retiring in six years and, as she put it, "have the exact right amount of time left."