Earlier this year, a waterfront home in Nantucket made headlines after its price dropped 74% in about six months. The price of a three-bedroom, two-bathroom home fell from $2.3 million to $600,000 after 70 feet of nearby shoreline in Nor’easter was destroyed, putting the property at risk.
But the ranch-style home on the south shore of the island off the coast of Massachusetts is not an anomaly. And with thousands of structures at risk, the question of who is paying how much for climate projects on Nantucket is already a pressing one.
Once the center of New England’s whaling industry, Nantucket has become a summer retreat for the wealthy, with only a small number of local residents remaining here during the winter. Nearly 70% of the island’s homes are owned by people who stay there for part of the year, according to the agency. Nantucket Current.
And these houses are expensive. According to ZillowThe average price of a single-family home on the island is nearly $2.9 million, compared to about $650,000 in the rest of Massachusetts. Belonging 26 Beachfront Properties Listed on ZillowMost listings range in price from $10 million to $20 million, with one priced at $35 million. But housing costs are now under increasing scrutiny.
Shelley Lockwood, a real estate agent from Nantucket, said: Luck Last fall, she began to become upset when she saw posted prices for properties on the island’s waterfront that she considered “totally wrong.” So, with Nantucket’s Coastal Resilience Advisory Committee, she helped launch a class for real estate agents to help them re-evaluate at-risk homes.
“It’s just not pretty,” she said. “If I bought a house for $10 million and it fell into the water and someone didn’t tell me, I’d be very upset.”
Attorney Chris Farley spoke about this. Luck that it helps homeowners reduce their property taxes to reflect the loss in home value caused by erosion. That requires mitigation by the city’s assessment board, which Farley said must take into account long-term erosion of the beach where the property sits.
However, if a significant number of homes lose value, property tax revenue for the entire city could suffer at a time when tax dollars could be desperately needed to address issues affecting waterfront homeowners.
Who pays
These costs to taxpayers have already been taken into account. In 2021, Nantucket adopted a Coastal Resilience Plan (CRP), which outlines nearly $1 billion in projects that will help the island counter some of the impacts of erosion and sea level rise. Part of that plan included dividing the island into “coastal resilience districts”—essentially dividing Nantucket into different zones according to their risk level and unique needs.
Leah Hill, the city’s coastal resiliency coordinator, said Boston Globe that if Nantucket fails to reduce coastal risks by 2070, nearly 2,400 structures would be at risk from coastal flooding and erosion, with damage costing $3.4 billion per year.
One idea that has floated among city officials is to impose a property improvement fee on property owners who would benefit most from resiliency projects, which would lower costs for the city as well as taxpayers who would suffer less.
Vincent Murphy, the city’s sustainability program manager, said Luck The email said many of the projects described in the CRP are small, with very localized benefits, which was the main rationale for the improvement fee idea.
“When the city and neighbors benefit from the project and agree to do the work together, then the costs will be shared,” Murphy said. “The city will pay for a portion, and the neighbors who benefit will also pay accordingly.”
Exactly who helps pay for projects and how much they pay will be determined on a case-by-case basis depending on how many beneficiaries the project has and the extent to which they benefit, Murphy said. Payments will be made over a specified period of up to 20 years.
But not everyone on Nantucket supports the concept. When the home improvement fee resolution came up for a vote at town meeting last month, voters opposed the plan and questioned whether it was fair to force some property owners to shoulder more of the cost than others. While the roadmap for coastal resiliency moved forward, a vote on the fee increase was delayed.
“The way it is set up is that the whole island is subject to this principle and is divided into districts, and those districts are charged for improvement projects,” Bobby DeCosta, a former board member, said at a town meeting. according to Nantucket Current. “It singles out the taxpayers in these areas, the people who own property near the ponds and beaches and who already pay most of the taxes for us.”