The market for modern beach houses is on the rise. New data shows this growth is driven by two factors: affluent families’ increased disposable income and a growing tourism industry in coastal regions, which makes these homes more desirable.
But given the escalating costs and risks associated with rising sea levels from climate change, is building beachfront homes still a wise decision? In some coastal communities, home insurance rates have tripled. And you may have seen the viral video in Massachusetts where wealthy homeowners paid $560,000 to build sand dunes to protect their homes, only for the dunes to be washed away three days later.
Is it time to stop building beachfront property? The Escape Home connected with Dr. Deborah Brosnan, a renowned ocean and climate scientist and the president and founder of Deborah Brosnan & Associates, to learn more.
This interview has been edited and shortened for clarity.
The Escape Home: Should we still be building homes on the beach?
Dr. Brosnan: On the beach? No. Should we be building on the beach in the way we used to build? We should definitely not be doing that. Can we adapt to living by the beach in a changing world? Yes, we can. Are we? No, because very few places have adaptation plans: municipalities, towns, and cities. They all know it’s coming and it’s going to accelerate, but very few people have a plan.
The Escape Home: If a beach homeowner lives in a city with loose restrictions and the local government isn’t giving guidance, what should they do to adapt?
Dr. Brosnan: If you haven’t built already, you have the option of setting your home back further and higher. But not everybody has that luxury because their homes are already there. The question is, what are you going to do to maintain your beach?
The easiest is to look at what nature is doing. Do you have sand dunes that you can build up and vegetate, not just put sand up? Do you have the opportunity to build oyster reefs on the East Coast? As you get further south, Florida and the Caribbean, you can build a living reef offshore instead of an oyster reef. They can both look beautiful. They’re underwater. They break up to 95 percent of a wave’s energy. When the water comes in, it’s much calmer. Calmer water doesn’t take sand away, and often it brings sand in. That is often the least expensive and very effective way.
In some cases, nature alone will not be the solution, and you may have to do a combination of nature with some engineering solutions. Maybe you build a buried seawall and you make the dune higher. Those hybrid solutions tend to also be less expensive than just using engineered solutions.
In some places around the East Coast and elsewhere, the situation is severe enough, both the sea level rise and subsidence, that the only way you’re going to protect these areas is through engineered solutions. That’s going to be a trade-off because if you end up building a sea wall or groin (a type of hydraulic system that protects the beach), at the end of the day, you’re going to lose the beach in front of it.
Engineered solutions are really expensive, and over time they can be a bit risky as well.
If you can work with your community and your city, you can come together and think about ‘What incentives do we give to homeowners? What incentives do we give to a community to invest together in these kinds of solutions–nature-based solutions, eco-engineered solutions–and provide them with a reason to invest?
Right now we don’t have many incentives. People are out there doing it on their own. What we need to do for homeowners at the community, and municipality, and national levels, is to say, ‘What kind of better policies and incentives can we put in place to help these communities, take ownership, and support them in creating more resilient coastlines?’
The Escape Home: What is an engineered solution?
Dr. Brosnan: Engineered structures are when we bring in coastal engineers. They will build groins, walls, and the big breakwaters you see in harbors.
These structures are not designed to give you the best view but to protect your coastline. They are expensive and have downstream effects.
The old idea was to build a concrete or rocky structure that would go straight out of the beach. That would slow down wave action, but it would also change the way sand moved. If you build a groin, and then your neighbor loses sand, then your neighbor builds a groin, and so on. Everybody is building groins, and, in some cases, suing each other.
The Escape Home: In terms of cost, what’s the price difference between natural solutions and engineered solutions? Are we talking about a difference of tens of thousands or six figures?
Dr. Brosnan: Depends. Let’s say that by rebuilding your dunes, you’re going to give your home adequate protection for the next 20 years. That is a few thousand dollars, because that really is building up with sand if you’re doing it yourself and planting vegetation. That is not expensive. If you’re looking at a long coastline where you have to do some major offshore work, you’re looking at a few million dollars. This is not for an individual homeowner, but a community.
The U.S. government is doing a $1.5 billion [erosion project] in New York, along 80 miles of Montauk to Fire Island. They’re investing $1.5 billion to bring back sand that’s been lost, in order to stabilize inlets, shore up some of the beachfront, and a little bit of other infrastructure, as well, because you have to think about drainage, water flow, sewage, and freshwater. I did a calculation and that’s $18,750,000 per mile.
The Escape Home: Wow. That’s insanity.
Dr. Brosnan: This tells us that we need to be doing something now. That’s a massive investment, and by the time it’s finished, would it be enough?
The Escape Home: I don’t want to lecture anyone, but it sounds like there’s also a responsibility that we have as stewards of the environment. Maybe it’s selfish to put expensive homes on the beach that everyone is going to have to pay for.
Dr. Brosnan I don’t know how the government will be able to pay for it or want to pay for it, but it’s not lecturing people. It’s saying you love the beach. The beach is giving you so much: walking on the beach, seeing the sunset, going there in the morning, hanging out, being in the waves. That alone is worth a lot. And then you have this beach protecting you from storm surges coming in. You’ve got the biodiversity associated with that. We are stewards of the land. Nature gives us a lot, and if we give back to nature, nature will continue to give to us.
The Escape Home: Are any of these mitigation techniques any different for condos or co-ops on the beach?
Dr. Brosnan The issues are larger because you’ve got much larger structures and you have to be really careful, not just about beach erosion, but about whether your loss of beach is destabilizing. Because for some of these very large structures, you’re seeing beach erosion, but you’re also seeing saltwater intrusion. So the sea level is rising, it’s coming in under these buildings. Sometimes it’s coming into the roads. Palm Beach, Florida, spending a lot of money pumping water back out. Particularly for these condos, that is a big issue along these shorelines, particularly the saltwater intrusion.
The same general principles apply: setbacks, elevations, leveraging as much of the natural solution as you can, and don’t build too close to shore. That is the one takeaway message. Also, close to shore is now closer than it was.
The Escape Home: How far are we talking?
Dr. Brosnan We’d look at our sea level rise and then think about what kind of storms we expect. And if you get a storm at a higher sea level rise, the water’s going to come in further. You can forecast the kind of storm and the storm surge you’d expect. Then you can say to yourself, ‘I want to be 20 feet further back and five feet higher.’ You can calculate the number(I can’t give you a number because it depends on where you are). If you’re on a low-lying area on a barrier island in southern South Carolina, you’re going to be further back and higher than if you’re in an area further in the northeast.
The Escape Home: Does the impact of being close to the shore cause elements of your home to deteriorate faster?
Dr. Brosnan Absolutely. Saltwater corrosion is a huge issue if you live by the beach. You see it a lot in the tropics, too. Electronics, windows, anything with metal on it as well. Salt water corrosion is a big issue but also sea spray. That salt is covering everything in your home, so cars don’t last as long and you get higher rust.
The Escape Home: Are you seeing a difference in regulation in the U.S. versus the Caribbean? Are they further ahead than we are on ensuring that they are building in a more respectable way or just across the globe in general?
Dr. Brosnan Interestingly, I don’t think there’s a pattern. We find ourselves in the position of talking to governments and saying ‘Your setbacks and elevations are out of date. We need to be thinking about the future, and here are some guidelines to use.’ Often, they will.
In the U.S., there is a reluctance for regulation. In Europe, we’re seeing more emphasis on regulation. Europe is changing its regulatory policies on buildings and how to deal with sea level rise. That’s why I think for the U.S., incentives would work really well. Because if people can be incentivized, whether it’s tax, whether it’s policy, it would really help.
The other thing you’re seeing in the U.S. that we’re not seeing in Europe is insurance companies are pulling out. Getting flood insurance, getting hurricane insurance is really hard in Florida. In Europe, they don’t do that, because often it’s the state that provides insurance. Insurance companies in Europe are thinking you can’t change the hazard that’s coming but you can support measures that prevent the damage and reduce the cost after it happens.
I think we have not yet had the conversations at the level we need to ask collectively, what exactly are we going to do? What is a useful set of guidelines for people in the Northeast? For people in the Caribbean? For people in California? That would at least give people and their governments a framework.
We’re not there yet, but hopefully we will get there.