A house on the New England island of Nantucket that was valued at $1.9 million but recently sold for $200,000 has brought U.S. coastal erosion concerns into focus.
Why it matters: Climate risks bring the "potential for widespread property value declines in coastal areas" and "constitutes a major economic threat," per Alice Hill, an expert on energy and the environment at the nonprofit Council on Foreign Relations.
- Hill noted in an email Thursday that 40% of the U.S. population lives in a coastal county.
Driving the news: The late June sale of the $200,000 Nantucket home comes months after a house valued at $2.2 million on the same street sold for $600,000. Another last October had to be demolished due to "extreme erosion" along the Massachusetts island's southwest shoreline, the Nantucket Current reports.
- Only "a couple of waterfront areas" are experiencing extreme erosion on Nantucket, and property values "are going up across the island," said Shelly Lockwood, a Nantucket real estate broker who helped develop a coastal resilience class for local agents on erosion and rising sea levels.
The big picture: Sea-level rise, a tangible effect of climate change, is accelerating across the U.S., per Christopher Hein, a coastal geologist at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, William & Mary.
- What's happening in Nantucket, a popular place to have summer houses among celebrities and billionaires, can be seen across the U.S.
- In the Outer Banks of North Carolina in May, officials had to close a stretch of beach after a sixth house collapsed into the sea due to erosion.
- Other coastal erosion hot spots include parts of California, like Dana Point, south of Los Angeles, and Plum Island, northern Mass.
- A new economic model from Duke University found that tax incentives for high-income property owners, coupled with federal subsidies for storm and flood damage mitigation, have driven coastal property prices higher despite rising climate risks, per a March study.
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