Wildfire Smoke Could Be Bad News for Rental Prices

New York state and some East Coast cities are facing air quality issues because of wildfire smoke from Canada that could result in higher rent prices, according to one expert.

"If these smoke events keep happening, I expect lawmakers to start mandating air filtration in building codes. This will impose extra costs on building owners and make rents more expensive. But the reality is climate change resiliency costs money," Daryl Fairweather, the chief economist at Redfin, wrote in a tweet on Wednesday.

The tweet comes as the smoke has resulting in poor air quality and advisories from lawmakers.

The New York State Department of Environmental imposed "Air Quality Health Advisories" for several parts of the state in response to wildfire smoke. During a press conference on Wednesday, New York Governor Kathy Hochul said the current air quality in the state was a "health and environmental crisis."

Newsweek reached out to the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation via email for comment.

"As we all know, the normal air quality index — safe, normal — is 50. Parts of our state have seen a level of over 400 in the last 24 hours, and that is a dangerous situation," Hochul said. "We have some of the high areas — Brooklyn, in the last hour, was at 413. Again, safe level is 50. This is 415. Health warnings for everyone, the entire population is likely be affected."

Similarly, Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser announced on Thursday that the city was under a "Code Purple" air quality alert, which "indicates very unhealthy air conditions for the entire public, not just those with respiratory illnesses."

Fairweather told Newsweek on Thursday that she previously visited Beijing, China, and noticed that many hotels, malls and other buildings had air filtration systems built in to combat air pollution.

Fairweather said that if air quality issues become a more regular problem in the U.S., there will likely be a push to "improve air quality in apartment buildings, shopping malls, office buildings" that would fall on building owners.

"It would add some expense to property managers, to homeowners, and that could get passed on to renters, as well," Fairweather said. "We've seen this in the United States more broadly, the building codes have gotten stricter over time, since like the 1970s, and that has in part contributed to raising rent. Any time building standards go up, it tends to have an upward pressure on rent."

Fairweather said that lawmakers imposing air filtration systems in buildings could first occur in big cities like New York City but noted that we might also see luxury apartments offer air filtration systems as an amenity, "like the way they offer air conditioning as an amenity."

This month, the Los Angeles City Council voted to have the city's Housing Department and Department of Building and Safety look into the possibility of mandating air conditioning systems in certain buildings, KABC-TV reported.