Tag: sea level rise real estate

Are Houses on Stilts the Future of Sea Level Rise-Threatened Coastal Real Estate?

Coping with sea level rise flooding and sea level rise-intensified storm surge requires innovation and imagination in the public and private sectors. Among the solutions now being implemented in areas with real estate that floods or soon may experiencing flooding are building and raising seawalls, installing pumps and storm drains, setting aside parks and open lands to absorb and store flood water, and elevating homes, roads and critical infrastructure.

Another option that’s been in use in areas that have long experienced severe beach erosion and storm surge flooding is building houses on stilts. This has been the go-to solution in areas like coastal Louisiana and the Outer Banks of North Carolina for decades. With the oceans continuing to rise and storm surge becoming and even greater threat, areas that didn’t rely on stilts as a solution to protecting houses and other structures are now considering them.

This month, Dezeen — the self-described “world’s most popular and influential architecture, interiors and design magazine” — has a feature article by reporter Ben Dreith about a 4,500 square foot home Brillhart Architecture built on stilts for an owner who owned a house that was heavily damaged during Hurricane Irma in 2017.

The modern home is built on stilts that range from very slender to large enough to form circular rooms reinforced with rebar that can also be used as storage spaces. The entire first floor has usable living space and open areas that are all designed to quickly shed flood water.

The article gives a great overview of how a stilts can help a house cope with rising waters. There are limits, however, to their usefullness. For example, a house built on stilts is of little use if the property and surrounding roads are frequently or permanently inundated and/or access to fresh water and sewage service, electricity or other utilities becomes impossible due to flooding. These are the types of issues buyers and owners should ponder when they’re considering building a house on stilts in an area vulnerable to sea level rise flooding and storm surge.

UN Report Warns Climate Change Threatens Not Only Sea Level Rise Real Estate but Human Survival Itself

“The scientific evidence is unequivocal, climate change is a threat to human wellbeing and the health of the planet. Any further delay in concerted global action will miss a brief and rapidly closing window to secure a liveable future.” — Hans-Otto Portner, Co-Chair of the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a United Nations’ group that assesses the science related to climate change, issued a dire warning for humanity regarding climate change today. “To avoid mounting loss of life, biodiversity and infrastructure, accelerated action is required to adapt to climate change, at the same time as making rapid, deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions,” the IPCC said in a media release. “So far progress on adaptation is uneven and there are increasing gaps between action taken and what is needed to deal with the increasing risks.”

The IPCC report is attractive massive media coverage not only for its strong wording but because of the urgency of its prediction that humans don’t have much longer to reduce the amount of fossil fuels — such as coal, oil and natural gas — it burns before it reaches a tipping point.

Businesses are taking notice. A Reuters article published today says governments and regulators are just starting to issue rules that require companies to alert investors to the impact climate change is having on their operations today and the threats they’ll face in the future.

Coastal real estate buyers, owners and investors, too, need to start gathering facts about the risk sea level rise poses to a property of interest and the neighborhood and community its located in. To make educated decisions, they need to know information such as if a property is currently experiencing sea level rise flooding, if it will in the near future, if roads and other critical infrastructure that serve the property are being impacted by flooding, and what the local government intends to do about it. They also need to know if the homeowner’s association or condo board, if there is one, plans to do to address sea level rise.

These types of questions will help them to gauge the impact sea level rise will have on maintenance and insurance costs, tax rates, association dues and special assessments, and, ultimately, property value. It will also give them an idea if there’s a threat that insurers and/or mortgage providers will stop providing policies and loans in a given area.

This might sound far-fetched to some people. But, just this month, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac announced a policy that they would not back mortgages in condo developments that weren’t properly maintained and that didn’t have the reserves to pay for routine and emergency maintenance. As sea level rises and damages more coastal real estate, it’s a good bet lenders will get tougher in approving loans in areas experiencing property-damaging sea level rise. This will impact the ability buyers to buy properties and of owners and investors to sell them.

While sounding negative, the IPCC report will actually have a positive effect if it spurs governments, businesses and individuals to get involved in the fight against climate change and global warming before the window of opportunity closes for good.

Sea Level Rise Flooding is Forcing Coastal Communities to Pass Seawall Height Mandates for Real Estate Owners

We’ve all heard the saying “A chain is only as strong as its weakest link.” The same is true for seawalls. A coastal community can strive to build a solid line of seawalls high enough to prevent ever-worsening sea level rise flooding, but if one public or private seawall in the series isn’t high enough to deal with the the next extreme tide event, floodwaters can inundate nearby real estate.

This reality is forcing communities to consider seawall height requirement ordinances similar to a law passed a few years ago in Broward County, Florida. According to the county’s “Build It High, Keep It Dry” brochure: “All property owners must maintain a tidal flood barrier in good repair. A tidal flood barrier is presumed in disrepair if it allows tidal waters to flow unimpeded through or over the barrier and on to adjacent property or rights-of-way. If a property is reported and documented to cause flooding of adjacent roads for neighboring properties it will be cited and required to prevent flood trespass within one year.”

The county says the seawall ordinance, the first in Florida, benefits property owners because it encourages them to budget for seawall adaptations before flooding occurs, which also protects their property value. A list of action steps recommended by the county includes determining the property elevation, gathering construction quotes, considering financing options, hiring an experienced contractor (who will get the required permits from the city, county, state and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers), and actually constructing the new seawall or flood barrier.

The impact of the new seawall ordinance on real estate owners is substantial. For example, a property owner can be fined for failing to maintain seawalls that prevent flooding. They are also required to disclose to buyers that seawalls are covered by the new law. A contract for sale in an affected area must state the following: “This real estate is located in a tidally influenced area. The owner may be required by county or municipal ordinance to meet minimum tidal flood barrier elevation standards during construction or substantial repair or substantial rehabilitation of seawalls, banks, berms, and similar infrastructure when required to abate nuisance flooding.”

Buyers, sellers, owners and real estate agents need to pay attention to the passage and implementation of seawall height requirement laws in their communities. The cost to repair or replace a seawall can run into tens of thousands of dollars — or even more — depending on factors such as the length of the seawall, its design, and the construction materials used. Real estate agents should encourage buyers to have seawalls inspected before submitting an offer. They should also make sure that sellers include any required language regarding local seawall ordinances in sales contracts.

Owners, too, should consider getting their seawalls inspected to make sure they meet the local codes. Inspection results will also help them to budget for any current or future repairs that may be needed. Seawalls typically last 30-50 years before they need to be replaced, but sea level rise, which is accelerating as the climate warms, may shorten their lifespan.

As with all laws that attempt to address global warming and sea level rise flooding, the new seawall height ordinances are bound to result in property owner lawsuits. The truth is, however, that lawsuits are not going to stop sea level rise — reducing the release of greenhouse gases will — and, ultimately, someone is going to have to pay the freight to upgrade seawalls to prevent flooding to extend the time that coastal communities will be inhabitable. Buyers and owners need to assess the cost to make informed real estate decisions.

Take the Sea Level Rise Real Estate Quiz

Flooding is the most frequent and costly natural disaster in the U.S. Unfortunately, it’s also among the hardest to detect for real estate buyers. That’s due to the fact that between bouts of flooding — including sea level rise flooding — properties, roads and neighborhoods can appear high and dry.

The sea level rise real estate quiz video is meant to show buyers how hard it is to tell where flooding has occurred. The videos clips with dry properties were recorded during the dry season in South Florida. The clips with flooding taken at the same locations were recorded during fall king tide season, when the Earth, Sun, and Moon were in a certain proximity that promotes higher than normal tides.

A small but growing percentage of properties located right along the beach and Intracoastal Waterway flood several times a month from August through December. This type of sea level rise flooding is occurring in many communities along the Atlantic, Gulf, and Pacific coastlines. The situation is getting worse every year as the ocean continues to rise.

Clearly, buyers purchasing coastal properties need to ask sellers, real estate agents, neighbors, public officials, and flood insurance providers if the property of interest experiences sea level rise flooding. The laws governing the disclosure of flooding vary widely from state to state, so buyers need to consult multiple sources to get a complete picture before submitting a real estate contract.

Sea Level Rise & Real Estate: What happens when whispered truths are spoken out loud?

Sea level rise flooding is rapidly transforming from an issue that was whispered about in many coastal communities — for fear mere mention would tank the local real estate market — to one that’s appearing on the front pages of major newspapers. This week alone the Miami Herald featured articles titled “‘Now, It’s About Elevation’: Buying a South Florida home in the era of sea level rise” and “Miami Beach residents want sea level rise fixes. But finding the right spot is a battle”.

The first article features interviews with a real estate broker and other experts who commented on how higher elevation properties in the flat, flood-prone South Florida landscape are becoming the most valued by middle-class buyers as sea level rises. (Apparently, wealthy buyers can afford to absorb the loss if their properties are flooded.) The second article examines the growing NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) movement among residents in Miami Beach as the city struggles to find a location for a much-needed pump station that threatens to sully residents’ views.

Both articles are well-reported and matter-of-fact about the many complications sea level rise flooding poses to people involved in South Florida real estate. Reading the pieces made me think about how far we’ve come toward acknowledge the problem and what this tide change (pardon the pun) in awareness means to buyers, sellers, owners and real estate agents.

One thing’s clear: As buyers become more educated about the risk of sea level rise flooding, they are becoming more sophisticated about where they purchase property in coastal communities. An article published last December in the Charleston, SC, Post & Courier put it bluntly: “Downtown Charleston house hunters ask about home’s flooding history first”. With flooding an ever-worsening problem, “Does this property flood?” is sure to become the first question buyers ask in coastal communities all along the Atlantic, Pacific and Gulf of Mexico.

This reality is going to force owners to pay more attention to sea level rise to make sure that they get out before their property begins to lose value due to the direct flooding of their property or their neighborhood. Sellers are going to have to be very careful that they fill out seller’s disclosure forms in accordance with their state’s laws. (At this point, state seller’s disclosure laws range from full flood disclosure to none at all.) And real estate agents are going to have to make sure that they’re aware of which neighborhoods and properties in their farm area experience sea level rise flooding, that they fulfill their obligation to disclose the flooding to buyers in accordance with their state’s disclosure law and, if they’re a Realtor ™, their association’s Code of Ethics, and that they advise their sellers to comply with their state’s disclosure requirements. Conferring with real estate attorneys is always a good idea as there have been cases where real estate brokers and agents have had to pay out large sums of money for mishandling flooding-related issues.

Most Americans’ greatest investment is their homes. As buyers become savvier about sea level rise flooding and the many ways it can impact their home and their financial futures, it’s going to become harder to sell them a property that’s experiencing flooding now, soon to experience flooding, or difficult to access due to flooded roads. With this in mind, everyone involved in coastal real estate has to keep up to speed on this creeping catastrophe to make smart real estate decisions.

The New, Improved “7 Sea Level Rise Real Estate Questions for Buyers, Sellers, Owners & Real Estate Agents” is Finally Here!

It took some doing, but the paperback version of the 2021 Edition of “7 Sea Level Rise Real Estate Questions for Buyers, Sellers, Owners & Real Estate Agents” is now available on Amazon.com! The Kindle e-reader version is in Amazon’s review process.

The hardest part of writing this year’s edition was forcing myself to stop as new information about global warming and sea level rise kept streaming in. The new book is much more comprehensive than the first edition. It has special chapters that cover developments in the field since the 2020 edition and a detailed description of what happens when sea level rise floodwater streams into a community, neighborhood, and individual property. It also has more information and instructions on how buyers, sellers, owners and real estate agents can protect their financial future by performing due diligence — gathering information from more than one source — before they make a critical real estate decision in a coastal city experiencing or soon to experience sea level rise flooding.

The challenge to anyone involved in real estate along the Atlantic, Pacific and Gulf of Mexico coastlines remains unchanged: There is no single source of reliable information that will give them the facts they need to know about past, present, and future sea level rise flooding. So they have to put on their detectives’ hats and find it themselves. “7 Sea Level Rise Real Estate Questions for Buyers, Sellers, Owners & Real Estate Agents” will give them the tools and insight they need to gather the information they need to make informed decisions.

Please check back often. I’ll have a lot more to say about the book, and, now that Covid-19 appears to be calming down, I’ll post a lot more updates with the latest developments regarding sea level rise and real estate.

South Carolina Latest State to Consider Hiring a Sea Level Rise Resiliency Chief

South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster has proposed the creation of a chief resiliency office position at the highest levels of state government to help coordinate the state’s response to extreme storms and sea level rise flooding.

According to a report in The Post and Courier, the resiliency chief would develop plans to seek federal funding for flood mitigation projects, control development in vulnerable areas, and improve how the state responds to disasters.

If the new position is approved, South Carolina would join Florida and North Carolina — states long considered resistant to discussing climate change and sea level rise flooding — in appointing a high level official to deal with the problems created by global warming.

The South Carolina climate change czar would also be responsible for collecting the latest climate change information and relaying it to government officials and the public. Local government officials have told the state they need money for seawalls, drainage improvements and other projects to hold back rising tides. Charleston alone estimates it needs $2 billion to protect residents and real estate.

It’s unclear at this point whether Gov. McMaster’s proposal will get the support it needs from the state legislature. Meanwhile, sea level continues to rise.

Why Coastal Real Estate Buyers, Sellers, Owners & Realtors Should Be Concerned About an Iceberg that Just Broke Off Antarctica

It’s well established that climate change — global warming — is causing glaciers to melt at an ever-quickening pace in Antarctica and Greenland. As a result, sea levels too are rising at a faster rate every year.

The challenge for scientists gathering the data government officials, planners and buyers, sellers, owners and real estate agents in coastal cities need to make informed decisions in response to the rising waters is that there is more than glacial melting that can cause sea level to rise. The warming atmosphere and oceans are also eating away at ice shelves floating on the ocean that are the only barriers holding back inland glaciers that, if uncorked by the loss of the floating ice shelves, could raise sea levels not just by inches but by feet.

This point was illustrated today when satellite data showed sometime between February 8 and 9 an iceberg twice the size of Washington, DC, broke off the Pine Island Glacier in West Antarctica. The enormous iceberg itself won’t directly affect sea level rise. Floating ice already displaces a volume of water equal to the amount of water that runs off into the ocean as it melts.

The concern is that this calving event, the latest in increasingly frequent calving events, is another step in glacial retreat that could clear the way for an enormous amount of inland ice to flow into the sea, which would speed up sea level rise. In fact, if inland ice associated with the Pine Island Glacier and nearby Thwaites Glacier were free to flow into the sea, global sea levels could rise by as many as four feet.

Scientists don’t expect The Pine Island Glacier and Thwaites Glacier to slide into the sea tomorrow, but they’re still gathering the data they need to estimate when it could happen. With communities all along the Atlantic, Pacific and Gulf of Mexico coastlines already spending billions of dollars to combat sea level rise flooding, buyers, sellers, owners and real estate agents need to keep up on the latest developments in Antarctica and Greenland as if they were local stories. Ultimately, they are.

(The photo from the European Space Agency shows cracks forming on the ice shelf of the Pine Island Glacier in September 2019.)

Record Temperatures in Antarctica May Signal More Rapid Sea Level Rise

A weather station in Antarctica recorded the hottest temperature ever reached on Earth’s southern-most continent. Scientists at Argentina’s Esperanza research station on the Antarctic Peninsula said the temperature hit 65 degrees Fahrenheit.

Randall Cerveny, an official with the World Meteorological Organization, told National Public Radio, “This is unfortunately a continuing trend.” The station set the just-broken heat record in 2015. Cerveny added, “We are seeing these high temperature records — not only in Antarctica, but across the entire world — fall, whereas we just don’t see cold temperature records anymore.”

The last decade was the hottest ever recorded. Researchers are concerned that this is setting up a positive feedback loop where the warmer weather warms seawater which melts glaciers which causes even more warming. The end result is that the seas rise at an ever quickening pace, which puts more coastal areas at risk of flooding.

Melting glaciers in Antarctica and Greenland are the greatest contributors to sea level rise. Scientists worry that instability in the ice sheets due to global warming could lead to a massive release of ice and meltwater into the oceans. They’re working to understand the many ways warm air and seawater are impacting the glaciers. Their findings will help buyers and owners to decide where it’s safe to invest in coastal real estate.

Scientists Identify the Greatest Obstacle to Educating Real Estate Owners about the Threat of Sea Level Rise Flooding

Social scientists studying the effectiveness of climate change communications strategies wrote an opinion piece that concluded personal financial interest is the leading cause of real estate owners in coastal areas denying that sea level rise flooding poses a threat to their property.

Risa Palm, a professor of Urban Studies and Public Health at Georgia State University, and Toby W. Bolsen, an associate professor of American politics in the political science department at Georgia State, wrote the column for The Conversation. They said they showed property owners who lived in South Florida neighborhoods at-risk of sea level rise flooding and hurricane storm surge maps produced by First Street Foundation that indicated that their properties could be inundated or be impacted in other ways by floodwaters in the next 15 years. Their homes were also identified as being at risk of devaluation due to their proximity to the threat of sea level rise flooding.

“Surprisingly, we found that those who had viewed the maps were on average, less likely to say they believed that climate change was taking place than those who had not seen the maps,” Palm and Bolsen wrote. “Further, those who saw the maps were less likely than those survey respondents who had not seen the maps to believe that climate change was responsible for the increased intensity of storms.”

The researchers said Republicans surveyed “had the strongest negative response to the maps.” In fact, they found “party identification was the strongest predictor of general perceptions of climate change and sea level rise.” Ultimately, however, they said, “the majority of homeowners denied that there was a risk to their property values, regardless of political affiliation.”

In the end, Palm and Bolsen recommended that governments and organizations trying to educate the public about the threat of sea level rise flooding not only use easy to understand facts but a “nuanced approach” to change the way the information is perceived. Or, as they said, “As advertisers well know, it takes more than facts to sell any product.” To get people to stop and pay attention, the information also needs “an emotional hook.”

This study may explain why buyers continue to purchase property and owners continue to hold real estate that scientists have clearly identified as at-risk of sea level rise flooding within the next couple of decades. Unfortunately, turning a blind eye to this factual information won’t save them as the seas continue to rise at an ever-quickening pace.

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