Canadian wildfire smoke is now a homebuyer issue in Chicago and New York

In 2023, smoke from Canadian fires turned New York's sky orange and gave several Midwest cities some of the worst air on the planet. It wasn't a one-off: smoke seasons have returned since.

For buyers, this rarely shows up in a listing. But it matters for anyone with asthma, heart disease, or young kids — and for how you build: good filtration and tight windows have become selling points.

What to do: look up the area's history of unhealthy air days on EPA AirNow, and ask whether the home has a central system that can take a MERV-13 filter.