Underwater? Increasing Risks for North Carolina's Coastal Communities

<p>$465 million. That is the estimated market value of real-estate lost between 2005 and 2016 in Florida’s Miami-Dade area. The cause? Rising sea-levels and the resulting tidal flooding and hurricane storm surge, according to a recent peer-reviewed study by Steven McAlpine and Jeremy Porter of Columbia University. The same methodology was extended to coastal areas in the rest of Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia in an analysis published by the First Street Foundation. The lost market real-estate value in North Carolina in the same period is estimated to be $582 million, with Hatteras ($19.6 million), North Topsail Beach ($17 million) and Ocracoke ($16.2 million) topping the list of communities most impacted. The authors point to the emergence of “climate gentrification” as property values increase for higher elevation homes and decrease for lower-lying areas.</p> <p>These data coincide with the publication by the Union of Concerned Scientists of a forward-looking analysis of the likely impact of sea-level rise on real estate through the rest of this century. The report estimates the number of homes and commercial properties at risk of chronic inundation (26 floods per year) and presents data on numbers of properties, their market value, their property tax levels, and the number of people at risk for every coastal county (and community) for the years 2045 and 2100. It is important to note that these estimates do not consider the effects of hurricanes and major storms.</p> <p>Within 27 years, shorter than the period of standard mortgage, the researchers estimate that 22 North Carolina counties in [...]</p>