About

SeaLevelRiseRealEstate.com is intended to keep buyers, sellers, owners, and real estate agents informed about coastal flooding due to global warming and sea level rise. Being aware of which regions and properties are flooding now and which are at risk of flooding in the future BEFORE you enter into a real estate transaction, will help you to protect your financial future.

SeaLevelRiseRealEstate.com is especially useful if you’ve already purchased “7 Sea Level Rise Real Estate Questions”. The book—available in paperback and Kindle versions on Amazon.com—is chock full of information, including: 1) Basic facts about global warming and sea level rise—and why they’re both speeding up; 2) Resources that can help buyers, sellers, owners, and real estate agents to determine if a property floods or is at risk of flooding and assess how serious the threat is; 3) A detailed explanation of how not only direct flooding but the costs associated with living in an area that is experiencing flooding can pose an unexpected financial burden; and 4) Suggested responses to the problem. SeaLevelRiseRealEstate.com will help those who have read the book to stay informed before the next annual edition is published each December.

Considering the fact that many coastal communities are already experiencing sea level rise flooding that’s causing millions of dollars in damages to properties and infrastructure, no one living in a coastal area can afford to ignore the problem. The truth is if the property of interest is flooding, the buyer, seller, and owner are at risk of ballooning home maintenance costs, flood insurance premiums, taxes, and, where applicable, homeowner’s association and condo association fees and special assessments to deal with the problem. Even if the property isn’t currently flooding, you can still face ballooning flood insurance premiums and taxes, as a result of the flooding of neighborhoods in your area.

In addition, sea level rise flooding poses a unique risk to real estate agents. Those who don’t stay informed—or, worse, deny the problem exists—could be putting themselves at risk of lawsuits if they fail to advise buyers about the flooding status of a property, or they fail to advise their sellers to follow their state’s seller’s disclosure law, which can vary widely from state-to-state.

Larry Richardson, an experienced real estate agent and journalist, wrote “7 Sea Level Rise Real Estate Questions” and created this website after he noticed buyers were purchasing real estate in flood zones in South Florida without fully appreciating the threat. When he wrote the book, he made sure the information was applicable to the Atlantic, Pacific and Gulf of Mexico coastlines. He hopes the book and this website will even the playing field for everyone involved in real estate transactions in coastal areas.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Larry Richardson has been a licensed real estate agent in Florida since 2005. He put his license on hold — under what the Florida Real Estate Commission calls “voluntarily inactive status” — in 2017 to research this book and to pursue other opportunities.

Richardson graduated with honors in 1985 from the University of Southern California, where he double-majored in Broadcast Journalism and History. His college experience included several science classes, among them environmental geology and general geology, which sparked his interest in our changing planet.

Richardson’s journalism experience includes working as news director, reporter, writer, and announcer at radio stations in Virginia, Vermont and Maryland. He also wrote a column for a chain of newspapers that served readers in suburban Washington, D.C. In addition, Richardson worked for a decade as a public relations, public affairs, advertising, marketing, and crisis consultant to nationally recognized companies.

Richardson is a produced screenwriter — “Christmas Lodge”– photographer, videographer and social media influencer– mainly through a series of YouTube videos produced for his website StepByStepChef.com, which has attracted over 10 million views. Richardson’s travel and climate change-related video clips have appeared on broadcast and cable TV network programs.