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I was a dinner party when the topic of vacation homes comes came up. We were all young professionals in tech so a vacation home in middle age was not out of the

I was a dinner party when the topic of vacation homes comes came up. We were all young professionals in tech so a vacation home in middle age was not out of the question. When I mentioned my reluctance to invest in beach front property everyone seemed confused -- I don't own a home yet but it makes me wonder, how much is climate change being considered as a factor for family real estate? I'm sure commercial developers are taking these things into account but are normal people?

jbob2000 7y ago
Shoreline erosion is already concern for any waterfront property, and there are already devastating hurricanes and weather events they have to prepare for. From what I've seen, the owners of these properties are up to speed on the challenges the properties face. If there's damage, they repair it, it's just the cost of living next to the water.
- aphextim 7y ago
  In Florida, the entire first floor cannot be covered by flood insurance. Most homes do not have basements as you cannot dig down to create one. Most 1st floors of nicer homes are essentially a finished basement and posts to support the rest of the building and the main floor starts on the 2nd level. During a hurricane, you assume everything on the first floor to be a loss so usually people may have their pools, have granite/tile flooring and do not have carpet etc so that way after a flood/hurricane it's easy to clean/fix up.
  - journalctl 7y ago
    Alternatively, don’t live in Florida.
    - aphextim 7y ago
      Also this only applied in an area along the Gulf Coast, if you live further inland you may be able to get insurance that covers the first floor, but I have no idea. I do agree though, I like to visit Florida here and there but I would never want to live there permanently.
    - heavyset_go 7y ago
      This has become standard fare up and down the East Coast.
  - zorak 7y ago
    The point about insurance is not accurate. In some low-lying areas, these statements are accurate, but even in coastal areas it is far more common to have a finished 1st floor with the standard insurance rules. It all depends on the flood/evacuation zones.
  - jbob2000 7y ago
    That sounds like a smart way to engineer homes in flood prone areas.
  - hatsubai 7y ago
    This comment sounds somewhat strange to me. If you don't mind me asking, where are/were you living in Florida where this is the case? I have lived in South Florida for 25 years, residing in areas around Martin County, Port St Lucie, West Palm Beach, and Tallahassee. Most of my vacations were spent at friends houses in Tampa, Sarasota, Fort Lauderdale, Orlando, and even Marathon Key. Most houses I have lived in, and the houses my peers owned, were all one story houses. Those who lived in what insurances labels as "known flood zone" areas still had carpet, and the houses are decorated no differently than the houses I have seen in California when I lived there, as well as Michigan where I currently live. We also were able to enroll in flood insurance without any issues. Granted, it's extra insurance on top of typical home owners insurance, but Allstate had no issues providing us with flood insurance for over two decades of living there. Is this perhaps how the more wealthy people live, or is this maybe how a specific area lives? I have legitimately never heard of people purposely furnishing their first floor as if it were a basement. I have seen the trend of moving away from carpet, but that is a more general trend that I am observing here in MI, as well, so I am not entirely sure it is can be directly linked to home owners worrying about potential flooding.
    - aphextim 7y ago
      It was in a more affluent area of Ft. Myers where most homes were north of $750k on canals that go to the gulf. I apologize for not responding earlier, usually after 3-4 posts I end up being throttled where it says, "You are posting too much please slow down" and then I have to wait until the next day.
- refurb 7y ago
  I think shoreline erosion is a good example of what will happen. An apartment building just south of SF was recently condemned and torn down because the cliff it sits on is slowly falling into the ocean.[1] [1]https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-pacifica-apartment-cliffside-demolition-20170130-story.html https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-pacifica-apartm...
GoodJokes 7y ago
Normal people? Normal people can't afford vacation homes let alone a primary home. Check your privilege.
scarejunba 7y ago
You don’t have to worry. The government will bail you out like they do the people who build in forest fire land and in flood plains. EDIT: I don't think I'm wrong actually. Take Pacifica, CA for instance. Local homeowners oppose managed retreat and will ask the government to perform coastline erosion control.
- 0xffff2 7y ago
  And yet, elsewhere someone posted a link to an article about how three large apartment buildings have already been torn down in Pacifica. The ocean doesn't care much about city policy. Eventually it's going to be untenable to resist no matter how wealthy you are.
  - scarejunba 7y ago
    Oh, and we didn't pay them off via some national insurance program? I'm surprised and somewhat impressed. I'd expect those parties to have required the government to pay out.
eloff 7y ago
The sea level rise is slow enough, at less than 1cm per year projected average to 2100, that it doesn't have a material affect on your decision, unless the land is freakishly flat and low (like a sand atoll somewhere) So respectfully, I think your aversion is more emotional than logical. Lots of emotional down-voting going on. I'm still right.
- JofArnold 7y ago
  That’s not how it works. That’s why you are getting downvoted. Firstly the rise is not the same everywhere - some places will have vastly higher sea levels. Secondly Venice didn’t suddenly get flooded by going from from 0cm too high to 1cm too high this year; the issue with climate change is not just the level but also the highs from more energetic, wetter storms etc.
  - eloff 7y ago
    No, I'm still right. It is true some places will have more rise, but also some places will have lower rise. Also storms are not getting noticeably stronger either, that's just as slow. Really you can buy ocean front property, and the concerns are more to do with local tides and weather and topography than anything to do with climate change. Cost will still be the primary concern, beachfront property is not cheap. The local issues dwarf climate change to the point that it likely doesn't even feature in your final decision, if you're being logical and not emotional.
    - seanccox 7y ago
      In my work with climate data, scientists in my cohort are instructing caution that many (linear) models are incorrect, and those are the figures you quote (1cm/year sea-level rise). However, not only have past sea-level rise projections been incorrectly low(1), but tropical storms/hurricanes have become measurably more frequent, more powerful, and slower(2), which also causes increased flooding. So, even if your beachfront property is not at increased risk from sea level rise, there is an increased risk of flooding and storm-surge exposure (in some places). When I was attempting to establish historical storm trends for the Florida Keys in the early 18th century (for an archaeological study), one colleague suggested I not use post-2004 data, because the warming of the oceans was skewing everything from mean wind directions to the number of hurricanes to the current patterns. The costs associated with beachfront property are also rising, due to the insurance industry's discomfort with the risks and the additional maintenance costs(3). Even the US's National Flood Insurance Program is increasing the charges of its subsidized coastal insurance products(4), because private industry deems many coastal properties uninsurable. So, I gotta ask: On what data are you basing your opinions? 1) https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-12808-z https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-12808-z 2) https://www.theguardian.com/weather/ng-interactive/2018/sep/11/atlantic-hurricanes-are-storms-getting-worse https://www.theguardian.com/weather/ng-interactive/2018/sep/... 3) https://www.allpropertymanagement.com/blog/post/what-climate-change-means-for-coastal-real-estate-values/ https://www.allpropertymanagement.com/blog/post/what-climate... 4) https://www.gulfshoreinsurance.com/summary-of-nfip-program-changes/ https://www.gulfshoreinsurance.com/summary-of-nfip-program-c...
Reedx 7y ago
Insurance companies in particular would be interesting to watch, since they're focused on risk management and have a lot of skin in the game. How are they reacting?
- wlesieutre 7y ago
  Subsidized by your taxes via the National Flood Insurance Program (edit: speaking US-centrically here) https://www.independent.org/news/article.asp?id=10524 https://www.independent.org/news/article.asp?id=10524 > “The potential losses generated by NFIP have created substantial financial exposure for the federal government and U.S. taxpayers,” the U.S. Government Accountability Office concluded in a February 2013 report to Congress. “While Congress and FEMA intended that NFIP be funded with premiums collected from policyholders and not with tax dollars, the program was, by design, not actuarially sound.” > In 2012, in an attempt to provide some financial stability to the ailing NFIP, which was $20 billion in debt at the time, Congress required FEMA to phase out many of the subsidized policies in order to more accurately reflect cost and risk. Existing policyholders naturally balked at paying the higher premiums, however, and the backlash was strong enough that politicians quickly caved and rescinded the requirements, restoring the grandfathering of subsidized policies and capping premium increases. tl;dr: Beachfront property owners don't want to pay for their own flood insurance, so you get to pay for it instead. In October 2017 the government wrote off $16 billion of that debt, and as of February 2018 it was still in debt to the tune of $20.5 billion. Thanks to these subsidies, people will keep rebuilding in the same idiotic places knowing that it will flood again, which is fine because you're paying for the bulk of their insurance.
  - mullingitover 7y ago
    I think if the insurance wasn't subsidized, the (massive) values of those beachfront properties would collapse. With that, the tax revenues derived from that would sink beneath the waves, which would bankrupt local and possibly state governments. From what I understand those subsidies are what's keeping Florida from becoming a failed state.
    - 7y ago
bassman9000 7y ago
Not much it seems https://twitter.com/evankirstel/status/1164575263293956096 https://twitter.com/evankirstel/status/1164575263293956096
nostrademons 7y ago
We looked into it when we were considering the future of my mom's summer cottage (~10 feet above sea level, ~200 yards from beach, main road floods @ 4.5 feet, been in her family since 1955). My sister's a geologist so she has access to all sorts of topological maps and climate models. Ultimately, though, the worst climate models show about 18 inches of sea level rise over the next century, so it wasn't a serious consideration. I'd be much more worried about more severe storms, but it's not in an area with significant hurricane risk.
- flukus 7y ago
  There's a few other factors and I'd be worried about the combination of them more than any single one. Depending in location and geography and timing you can easily lose a couple of feet by an exceptionally high tide, sea level is the average of high tide marks and not the highest it can get. Even in inland areas well above sea level this can affect drainage and cause flooding. Then you've got large waves that can be whipped up by a regular storm or a hurricane, these can easily go another couple of feet above the current tide level and just standing ankle deep in water like that isn't the safest thing in the world. Then there's things like rainwater flooding that can come from inland, depending on geography and rain that can be negligible or huge. But if the high tide and waves alone conspire then you might only have 6 feet of storm surge buffer. With an 18 inch sea level rise that's down to 4.5 feet. Even without that erosion can do a lot of damage without expensive remediation.
FooHentai 7y ago
Similar experience - I was recently at a neighborhood get-together and discussion came up around how everyone was benefiting from property price rises and considering second homes (rentals, batches/holiday homes). It weirded me out but for a different reason: I couldn't avoid thinking about income inequality and dropping home ownership among younger generations in our country. Having a discussion about acquiring additional properties to seek rental income or to sit vacant for the majority of the year, and not factoring in that big issue, just didn't sit right with me. Not wanting to derail the mood or upset my neighbors, I just didn't actively participate. But I've been stewing on it for days since. Back on the topic of waterfront real estate, there have been some really interesting articles linked on HN recently about Miami's situation - seemingly irrational activity happening in a city facing straight into the threat of rising ocean levels: https://popula.com/2019/04/02/heaven-or-high-water/ https://popula.com/2019/04/02/heaven-or-high-water/
GreeniFi 7y ago
Good question. What may happen - possibly relatively soon - is that banks will refuse to provide mortgages over a certain length of time for certain property. Property which is not mortgageable will take a serious haircut in its value. Very quickly, those properties will become “stranded assets”. What will be the likely policy response? I suspect governments might step in with insurance and guarantees. Why? Because in the Anglo world, our economies and arguably culture (ref your dinner party conversation) are organized around increases in house prices, not their collapse. Governments are always pumping house prices ever higher to inject “feel good” into the economy. The parallel is a bitcoin whale, especially in the UK.

jbob2000 7y ago

Shoreline erosion is already concern for any waterfront property, and there are already devastating hurricanes and weather events they have to prepare for. From what I've seen, the owners of these properties are up to speed on the challenges the properties face. If there's damage, they repair it, it's just the cost of living next to the water.

aphextim 7y ago
In Florida, the entire first floor cannot be covered by flood insurance. Most homes do not have basements as you cannot dig down to create one. Most 1st floors of nicer homes are essentially a finished basement and posts to support the rest of the building and the main floor starts on the 2nd level. During a hurricane, you assume everything on the first floor to be a loss so usually people may have their pools, have granite/tile flooring and do not have carpet etc so that way after a flood/hurricane it's easy to clean/fix up.
- journalctl 7y ago
  Alternatively, don’t live in Florida.
  - aphextim 7y ago
    Also this only applied in an area along the Gulf Coast, if you live further inland you may be able to get insurance that covers the first floor, but I have no idea. I do agree though, I like to visit Florida here and there but I would never want to live there permanently.
  - heavyset_go 7y ago
    This has become standard fare up and down the East Coast.
- zorak 7y ago
  The point about insurance is not accurate. In some low-lying areas, these statements are accurate, but even in coastal areas it is far more common to have a finished 1st floor with the standard insurance rules. It all depends on the flood/evacuation zones.
- jbob2000 7y ago
  That sounds like a smart way to engineer homes in flood prone areas.
- hatsubai 7y ago
  This comment sounds somewhat strange to me. If you don't mind me asking, where are/were you living in Florida where this is the case? I have lived in South Florida for 25 years, residing in areas around Martin County, Port St Lucie, West Palm Beach, and Tallahassee. Most of my vacations were spent at friends houses in Tampa, Sarasota, Fort Lauderdale, Orlando, and even Marathon Key. Most houses I have lived in, and the houses my peers owned, were all one story houses. Those who lived in what insurances labels as "known flood zone" areas still had carpet, and the houses are decorated no differently than the houses I have seen in California when I lived there, as well as Michigan where I currently live. We also were able to enroll in flood insurance without any issues. Granted, it's extra insurance on top of typical home owners insurance, but Allstate had no issues providing us with flood insurance for over two decades of living there. Is this perhaps how the more wealthy people live, or is this maybe how a specific area lives? I have legitimately never heard of people purposely furnishing their first floor as if it were a basement. I have seen the trend of moving away from carpet, but that is a more general trend that I am observing here in MI, as well, so I am not entirely sure it is can be directly linked to home owners worrying about potential flooding.
  - aphextim 7y ago
    It was in a more affluent area of Ft. Myers where most homes were north of $750k on canals that go to the gulf. I apologize for not responding earlier, usually after 3-4 posts I end up being throttled where it says, "You are posting too much please slow down" and then I have to wait until the next day.
refurb 7y ago
I think shoreline erosion is a good example of what will happen. An apartment building just south of SF was recently condemned and torn down because the cliff it sits on is slowly falling into the ocean.[1] [1]https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-pacifica-apartment-cliffside-demolition-20170130-story.html https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-pacifica-apartm...

GoodJokes 7y ago

Normal people? Normal people can't afford vacation homes let alone a primary home. Check your privilege.

scarejunba 7y ago

You don’t have to worry. The government will bail you out like they do the people who build in forest fire land and in flood plains. EDIT: I don't think I'm wrong actually. Take Pacifica, CA for instance. Local homeowners oppose managed retreat and will ask the government to perform coastline erosion control.

0xffff2 7y ago
And yet, elsewhere someone posted a link to an article about how three large apartment buildings have already been torn down in Pacifica. The ocean doesn't care much about city policy. Eventually it's going to be untenable to resist no matter how wealthy you are.
- scarejunba 7y ago
  Oh, and we didn't pay them off via some national insurance program? I'm surprised and somewhat impressed. I'd expect those parties to have required the government to pay out.

eloff 7y ago

The sea level rise is slow enough, at less than 1cm per year projected average to 2100, that it doesn't have a material affect on your decision, unless the land is freakishly flat and low (like a sand atoll somewhere) So respectfully, I think your aversion is more emotional than logical. Lots of emotional down-voting going on. I'm still right.

JofArnold 7y ago
That’s not how it works. That’s why you are getting downvoted. Firstly the rise is not the same everywhere - some places will have vastly higher sea levels. Secondly Venice didn’t suddenly get flooded by going from from 0cm too high to 1cm too high this year; the issue with climate change is not just the level but also the highs from more energetic, wetter storms etc.
- eloff 7y ago
  No, I'm still right. It is true some places will have more rise, but also some places will have lower rise. Also storms are not getting noticeably stronger either, that's just as slow. Really you can buy ocean front property, and the concerns are more to do with local tides and weather and topography than anything to do with climate change. Cost will still be the primary concern, beachfront property is not cheap. The local issues dwarf climate change to the point that it likely doesn't even feature in your final decision, if you're being logical and not emotional.
  - seanccox 7y ago
    In my work with climate data, scientists in my cohort are instructing caution that many (linear) models are incorrect, and those are the figures you quote (1cm/year sea-level rise). However, not only have past sea-level rise projections been incorrectly low(1), but tropical storms/hurricanes have become measurably more frequent, more powerful, and slower(2), which also causes increased flooding. So, even if your beachfront property is not at increased risk from sea level rise, there is an increased risk of flooding and storm-surge exposure (in some places). When I was attempting to establish historical storm trends for the Florida Keys in the early 18th century (for an archaeological study), one colleague suggested I not use post-2004 data, because the warming of the oceans was skewing everything from mean wind directions to the number of hurricanes to the current patterns. The costs associated with beachfront property are also rising, due to the insurance industry's discomfort with the risks and the additional maintenance costs(3). Even the US's National Flood Insurance Program is increasing the charges of its subsidized coastal insurance products(4), because private industry deems many coastal properties uninsurable. So, I gotta ask: On what data are you basing your opinions? 1) https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-12808-z https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-12808-z 2) https://www.theguardian.com/weather/ng-interactive/2018/sep/11/atlantic-hurricanes-are-storms-getting-worse https://www.theguardian.com/weather/ng-interactive/2018/sep/... 3) https://www.allpropertymanagement.com/blog/post/what-climate-change-means-for-coastal-real-estate-values/ https://www.allpropertymanagement.com/blog/post/what-climate... 4) https://www.gulfshoreinsurance.com/summary-of-nfip-program-changes/ https://www.gulfshoreinsurance.com/summary-of-nfip-program-c...

Reedx 7y ago

Insurance companies in particular would be interesting to watch, since they're focused on risk management and have a lot of skin in the game. How are they reacting?

wlesieutre 7y ago
Subsidized by your taxes via the National Flood Insurance Program (edit: speaking US-centrically here) https://www.independent.org/news/article.asp?id=10524 https://www.independent.org/news/article.asp?id=10524 > “The potential losses generated by NFIP have created substantial financial exposure for the federal government and U.S. taxpayers,” the U.S. Government Accountability Office concluded in a February 2013 report to Congress. “While Congress and FEMA intended that NFIP be funded with premiums collected from policyholders and not with tax dollars, the program was, by design, not actuarially sound.” > In 2012, in an attempt to provide some financial stability to the ailing NFIP, which was $20 billion in debt at the time, Congress required FEMA to phase out many of the subsidized policies in order to more accurately reflect cost and risk. Existing policyholders naturally balked at paying the higher premiums, however, and the backlash was strong enough that politicians quickly caved and rescinded the requirements, restoring the grandfathering of subsidized policies and capping premium increases. tl;dr: Beachfront property owners don't want to pay for their own flood insurance, so you get to pay for it instead. In October 2017 the government wrote off $16 billion of that debt, and as of February 2018 it was still in debt to the tune of $20.5 billion. Thanks to these subsidies, people will keep rebuilding in the same idiotic places knowing that it will flood again, which is fine because you're paying for the bulk of their insurance.
- mullingitover 7y ago
  I think if the insurance wasn't subsidized, the (massive) values of those beachfront properties would collapse. With that, the tax revenues derived from that would sink beneath the waves, which would bankrupt local and possibly state governments. From what I understand those subsidies are what's keeping Florida from becoming a failed state.
  - 7y ago

bassman9000 7y ago

Not much it seems https://twitter.com/evankirstel/status/1164575263293956096 https://twitter.com/evankirstel/status/1164575263293956096

nostrademons 7y ago

We looked into it when we were considering the future of my mom's summer cottage (~10 feet above sea level, ~200 yards from beach, main road floods @ 4.5 feet, been in her family since 1955). My sister's a geologist so she has access to all sorts of topological maps and climate models. Ultimately, though, the worst climate models show about 18 inches of sea level rise over the next century, so it wasn't a serious consideration. I'd be much more worried about more severe storms, but it's not in an area with significant hurricane risk.

flukus 7y ago
There's a few other factors and I'd be worried about the combination of them more than any single one. Depending in location and geography and timing you can easily lose a couple of feet by an exceptionally high tide, sea level is the average of high tide marks and not the highest it can get. Even in inland areas well above sea level this can affect drainage and cause flooding. Then you've got large waves that can be whipped up by a regular storm or a hurricane, these can easily go another couple of feet above the current tide level and just standing ankle deep in water like that isn't the safest thing in the world. Then there's things like rainwater flooding that can come from inland, depending on geography and rain that can be negligible or huge. But if the high tide and waves alone conspire then you might only have 6 feet of storm surge buffer. With an 18 inch sea level rise that's down to 4.5 feet. Even without that erosion can do a lot of damage without expensive remediation.

FooHentai 7y ago

Similar experience - I was recently at a neighborhood get-together and discussion came up around how everyone was benefiting from property price rises and considering second homes (rentals, batches/holiday homes). It weirded me out but for a different reason: I couldn't avoid thinking about income inequality and dropping home ownership among younger generations in our country. Having a discussion about acquiring additional properties to seek rental income or to sit vacant for the majority of the year, and not factoring in that big issue, just didn't sit right with me. Not wanting to derail the mood or upset my neighbors, I just didn't actively participate. But I've been stewing on it for days since. Back on the topic of waterfront real estate, there have been some really interesting articles linked on HN recently about Miami's situation - seemingly irrational activity happening in a city facing straight into the threat of rising ocean levels: https://popula.com/2019/04/02/heaven-or-high-water/ https://popula.com/2019/04/02/heaven-or-high-water/

GreeniFi 7y ago

Good question. What may happen - possibly relatively soon - is that banks will refuse to provide mortgages over a certain length of time for certain property. Property which is not mortgageable will take a serious haircut in its value. Very quickly, those properties will become “stranded assets”. What will be the likely policy response? I suspect governments might step in with insurance and guarantees. Why? Because in the Anglo world, our economies and arguably culture (ref your dinner party conversation) are organized around increases in house prices, not their collapse. Governments are always pumping house prices ever higher to inject “feel good” into the economy. The parallel is a bitcoin whale, especially in the UK.