Many US coastal properties could be lost to the ocean within 30 years. (Representative Image)
59-year-old David Moot, who is an interior painter and designer, has purchased a three-bedroom Cape Cod home for $395,000 (Rs 3,3153910). The house only stands 25 feet from the crumbling cliff facing the Atlantic Ocean. But Mr Moot is not scared by this situation, and he believes, “Life’s too short to wait and not take advantage of this.”
The sale is one of a growing number of purchases made by buyers who snap up bargain-priced waterfront homes imperilled by rising sea levels and crumbling coastlines because of climate change. The story’s been covered by many big media houses, as such homes become increasingly in demand despite the risks.
According to Bloomberg, Moot’s purchase of the home was 67% less than the seller’s $1.195m asking price in 2022. Speaking about his purchase of the home, which rests a mere 25ft from a sandy slope, Moot told the outlet: “Life’s too short, and I just said to myself, ‘Let’s just see what happens.'”
“It’s going to eventually fall into the ocean, and it may or may not be in my lifetime,” he added.
What Moot paid for the Eastham home was 67% less than the $1.195 million the seller initially sought in 2022. On Nantucket, an island retreat for the wealthy south of Cape Cod, a seaside house at 28 Sheep Pond Road sold in June for just $200,000, about a 10th of its assessed valuation this year.
As warming oceans spawn stronger, more frequent storms and sea levels rise, more than $106 billion in US coastal properties could be consumed by the ocean in less than 30 years, according to data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
“The bottom line is, between 50 and 100 years from now, there are communities that will be underwater,” Dylan McNamara, a professor of oceanography at the University of North Carolina Wilmington who has studied coastal real estate markets for nearly two decades told Bloomberg. “It’s just a matter of time before those property values go down. How they go down, whether it’s a precipitous drop off a cliff or it’s a smoother unwinding, is still up in the air.”
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