ICE Climate, Property and Loan-Level Datasets Provide Holistic Visibility into Broad-Based Housing Sector Risk

Intercontinental Exchange, Inc. (NYSE: ICE), a leading global provider of technology and data, will be presenting original research made possible by the integration of the company’s growing collection of climate, property and loan-level mortgage datasets and proprietary analytics. The research, focused on the critical intersection of climate risk and housing affordability, will be presented during the AmeriCatalyst Going to Extremes Leadership Summit in Washington, DC on Thursday, April 18, 2024.

“Home affordability has been a defining challenge of the U.S. housing market since the pandemic,” said Ben Graboske, President of Mortgage Data and Analytics at ICE. “Until now, the focus has mainly been the low inventory, rising interest rates and high home prices that have been straining affordability. But the potential impact of climate-related events – and their ripple effects - on the true cost of ownership cannot be overlooked. That holds true for homeowners, lenders, investors and policy makers alike.”

Leveraging vast data assets from across its Mortgage and Sustainable Finance businesses, ICE was able to quantify a more all-inclusive cost of home ownership. Using granular, timely loan- and property-level data, ICE researchers aggregated anonymized mortgage payments, property taxes, property insurance, as well as estimated utility bills for electric, water and heating fuels for millions of homeowners.

Combining this information with ICE’s property-level climate risk metrics that cover more than 100M US homes will help improve transparency and risk understanding throughout the housing finance sector. Soon to be available via the ICE Rapid Analytics Platform^SM (RAP) and the contributory McDash loan-level mortgage performance dataset, the convergence will allow users to apply ICE’s climate metrics to individual loans, properties as well as entire portfolios. ICE is also leveraging the combined insight to incorporate enhanced asset-level climate risk modeling for its existing municipal bond and mortgage-backed securities products.

The downstream impact goes beyond raising further barriers to homeownership for first time buyers hoping to break into the market. Even millions of current homeowners with low fixed-rate loans are seeing such variable costs of homeownership on the rise. ICE’s research shows how such climate-driven factors may contribute to housing cost burdens at every level, and drills down into where climate risk may continue to drive cost growth.