Hi, I’m Ethan Fletcher. I’m a husband, father, lover of the outdoors, and a real estate agent focused on climate resilience.
I live with my family in New York’s beautiful Hudson Valley, where we moved after a decade in Brooklyn.
My path to being the first climate-focused real estate agent began in early 2022 with two milestones: our family began looking for a house and I started writing about climate change. The preceding years had been dense with climate disasters, including Hurricane Ida, which crashed into New York in September 2021. Ida dumped a record 3.15 inches of rain on Central Park in a single hour, far exceeding the previous record of 1.94 inches.
This sharp increase in rainfall intensity was on my mind when we started looking for a house. Knowing we needed one that would be durable in climate disasters but lacking guidance, I read voraciously on all the topics in which I needed to be fluent. I studied drainage systems and fire-resistant construction, spot-checked climate risk models by looking at familiar places, and dug into divergent regional risk profiles.
As I built and honed my understanding of the multiple interacting factors that produce climate vulnerability in real estate, I synthesized them into a unique framework for identifying climate resilient homes. That summer we closed on a wonderful, cozy house where we still live. It has proven just as resilient as expected.
Our experience stuck with me. The lack of guidance in the face of escalating climate risk and sky-high prices is striking. Buyers need help evaluating the climate resilience of prospective homes, and I developed a framework for doing just that. It was clear I was the right person for the job, so I founded Climate Resilient Homes to help others looking for resilient homes.
“Buyers need help evaluating the climate resilience of prospective homes, and I had developed a framework for doing just that.”
Even my academic background is aligned with my work as a climate-focused realtor. My undergraduate coursework at Tufts in civil engineering (B.S.) and economics (B.A.) provided the tools to understand the structural and financial aspects of evaluating and buying resilient homes. And my three years at Yale Law School (J.D.) enhanced my systems thinking and sharpened my nose for unseen risks.
If you need help finding a climate resilient home for your family, you should schedule a free consultation with me.