NYT - Price & Sales Growth Slow For Coastal Real Estate; Low-Lying Miami-Dade Sales Off 7.6%

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A warming planet has already forced a number of industries — coal, oil, agriculture and utilities among them — to account for potential future costs of a changed climate. The real estate industry, particularly along the vulnerable coastlines, is slowly awakening to the need to factor in the risks of catastrophic damage from climate change, including that wrought by rising seas and storm-driven flooding.

But many economists say that this reckoning needs to happen much faster and that home buyers urgently need to be better informed. Some analysts say the economic impact of a collapse in the waterfront property market could surpass that of the bursting dot-com and real estate bubbles of 2000 and 2008.

The fallout would be felt by property owners, developers, real estate lenders and the financial institutions that bundle and resell mortgages. Over the past five years, home sales in flood-prone areas grew about 25 percent less quickly than in counties that do not typically flood, according to county-by-county data from Attom Data Solutions, the parent company of RealtyTrac. Many coastal residents are rethinking their investments and heading for safer ground.

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Florida has six of the 10 American urban centers most vulnerable to storm surge, according to a 2016 report from CoreLogic, a real estate data firm. Southeast Florida experiences about 10 tidal floods per year now. That number is likely to be around 240 floods per year by 2045, according to climate researchers. In the past year, home sales have increased 2.6 percent nationally, but have dropped about 7.6 percent in high-risk flood zones in Miami-Dade County, according to housing data. Many coastal cities are taking steps toward mitigation, digging runoff tunnels, elevating roads and building detention ponds.

James Murley, Miami-Dade’s chief resilience officer, said it was important to avoid spooking the market since real estate investment produces much of the revenue that pays for these upgrades. This balancing act is especially important in Florida because the state and localities rely heavily on property and sales taxes for funding such projects.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/24/science/global-warming-coastal-real-estate.html?_r=0