Is climate change affecting home-buying patterns, such as people fleeing coastal areas?

In our own transactions, we haven't seen it. People still want to live in desirable locations, and we haven't had a buyer walk away from a coastal area citing climate change as the reason. Some buyers genuinely believe it will be a near-term issue and steer around certain areas on that basis. That's a personal call worth respecting, but it isn't showing up as a broad, measurable shift in where people buy. The real exception is risk that hits the wallet directly: wildfire-prone zones and disaster-exposed areas more generally. Those get avoided for a practical reason more than a philosophical one, because insurance can become hard to get or very expensive. A friend of ours looking to build in a fire-hazard area was quoted several hundred dollars a month just for fire coverage, which changes the math on a purchase in a hurry. So insurability and disaster risk move buyer behavior in specific pockets, while a wholesale flight from the coast is something we can't point to in the data or in our day-to-day. If you're weighing an area with elevated hazard risk, price the insurance before you fall in love with the house. That carrying cost is part of affordability.