For immediate release 20 January, 2022
Property data to power significant Otago University research into climate change
University of Otago researchers have launched a vital study into climate change that will leverage CoreLogic NZ’s property database to learn how future coastal flooding could impact residential property values.
CoreLogic joins the Reserve Bank of New Zealand as key partners on the three-year inter-disciplinary Strand Marsden Fund Project, which will help the top-tier research institute fill a knowledge gap around geographical information systems, geology, climate change, real estate and potential banking losses.
CoreLogic NZ Country Manager Simone Moors said the partnership provided University of Otago academics with access to approximately 30 years’ worth of housing data, providing researchers with extensive and timely property information.
“By supporting such critical fields of academic study, we’re acknowledging the important role this partnership plays in supporting climate change research,” she said.
“Through study, academics have the potential to implement change, inform property and policy decisions and potentially improve climate-related risk management practices.”
CoreLogic has an established history of supporting academics in Australia with housing market data and analytics partnering with not-for-profit organisation, RoZetta Institute (RoZetta) since 2004.
More than a dozen leading Australian universities utilise bulk extracts of anonymised transactional data, unlocking key deeper relationships in the data to better understand and measure housing market trends.
CoreLogic NZ Head of Research Nick Goodall said it was critical to support research into property and peripheral sectors such as banking and finance, property development and valuations, and public sector policy.
“Our strength lies in the power of our data – we bring together hundreds of diverse data assets, which we clean, match and synthesise. We offer our clients the most comprehensive property-level insights available in New Zealand,” he said.
“Providing academics with access to one of New Zealand’s most authoritative sources of housing statistics and housing-related data provides an opportunity for innovative research that will explore new methodologies, test theories and investigate the relationship between housing markets and other factors such as climate change.”
University of Otago Associate Professor and project lead Ivan Diaz-Rainey said the study would analyse whether failing to account for future risks has the potential to destabilise New Zealand’s banking and finance industry.
Professor Diaz-Rainey is the Director and founder of the Climate and Energy Finance Group (CEFGroup), one of the largest climate and green finance academic research teams in the world.
The CEFGroup team will take research lessons from Māori traditions that span multiple generations and consider how Māori investment principles, influenced by environmental and family circumstances, are integral to investment decisions.
“Since both property and financial markets are forward-looking, understanding the interplay between increasing flooding hazard, related financial losses, and when those losses will occur, has profound implications for home owners, banks, insurers, and the stability of financial systems,” Professor Diaz-Rainey said.
“This research will explore to what extent, and when, increasing flood frequencies will impact property values in New Zealand’s coastal cities given that markets are forward looking and have imperfect information.”
Research members include Associate Professor Antoni Moore (School of Surveying, University of Otago), Dr Quyen Nguyen, Dr Simon Cox (GNS Science), Dr Greg Bodeker (Bodeker Scientific) and Dr Paul Thorsnes (Department of Economics, University of Otago).
For more information on the research project visit https://blogs.otago.ac.nz/strandproject/.
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