a A sprawling Florida mansion perched on a powdery white sand beach overlooking the azure Gulf of Mexico is currently the most expensive piece of real estate for sale in the United States and can be yours for just $295 million. Masu.
It is also one of the most vulnerable places in the country to climate change disasters and will face near-inevitable flooding in the coming years.
The 9-acre gated retreat in Naples is styled as “Florida’s most exclusive complex” and features two expansive guesthouses, a dock, and a yacht berth, facing the water on three sides for a refreshing stay. It stands as a symbol of luxury for those who seek it. Florida’s lifestyle is colliding with the climate crisis.
“It’s almost certain that this land will flood,” said Jeremy Porter, a climate risk researcher at the First Street Foundation, a nonprofit flood analysis organization.
According to First Street modeling, the $295 million Gordon Point property is nearly guaranteed to have a 68 percent risk of flooding over the next 15 years and a 95 percent chance of flooding over the next 30 years. Current climate threat ratings for real estate listings on Zillow say the risk of flooding is “severe” and the risk from wind is “extreme.”
“This is a beautiful area. People here want access to water and beaches, but they are very exposed to flooding,” Porter said. “These are properties that are basically built on water.”
The expensive Gordon Point enclave sits at the tip of Naples’ upscale neighborhood in Port Royal. The district consists of a narrow strip of low-lying land carved out by canals that hang from the southern edge of the city.
Here, mangroves, wetlands and protective dunes have been pushed aside to allow multi-million dollar developments to be built as close to the ocean as possible. The ocean is 6 inches higher than it was in the 1990s, and fossil fuel burning is accelerating sea level rise.
The threat to this idyllic environment is clearly illustrated by the five hurricanes that have struck western Florida in the past two years. The most destructive is Hurricane Ian in 2022, and more recently the quick one-two punch of Hurricanes Helen and Milton. . In Naples, storms brought on by the superheated Gulf Coast have flooded streets, torn apart houses and destroyed piers.
“There’s building going up towards the coast, we’re very low lying and we don’t have any good dune fortifications at the moment. No one really thought about storm surge here until Ian had an incident. ” said geologist and climatologist Michael Savarese. Experts from Florida Gulf Coast University, Naples, on the revelation.
“This entire region is extremely vulnerable to nuisance flooding and storm surge, and if storms like the ones we’ve had over the past two years continue, we won’t have time to breathe.”
This vulnerability is an unpleasant situation in which, like several other parts of the United States, the glittering crown jewels of destination states with burgeoning population growth are threatened by climate change disasters. is causing.
“They’re just buying time, they’re borrowing time,” Savarese said of the lavish homes that line Port Royal. “We are on a more extreme curve of sea level rise and nuisance flooding will become more of a concern with each high tide. I was captured.”
While there may still be buyers willing to purchase luxury real estate along Florida’s coastline, many Americans (many retirees) are flocking to the state in hopes of warmer weather and state tax exemptions. The climate crisis is further accelerating this trend.
Home insurance premiums in Florida, already the steepest in the nation, rose an additional 42% on average last year. At least a dozen insurance companies have evacuated Florida amid a spate of disasters, and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis says the state’s backstop insurance program is currently “unresolved.”
Meanwhile, DeSantis responded to this new era by removing references to climate change from state law.
In Naples, this means rewriting the city-drafted Climate Change Vulnerability Assessment to remove the word “climate change” before it can be used to request state funding to update major facilities such as stormwater systems. It means there is a need. It will not overflow onto the road during high tide.
“I’m just working on it,” Natalie Hardman, the city of Naples’ natural resources manager, said of the make-believe world she has to contend with. “I think that’s the game we play.”
Facing more intense storms and increasingly waning heat, Naples is working to keep water at bay by fortifying critical infrastructure and adding resilient design requirements to buildings, while at the same time post-storm clearing away debris.
“Unfortunately, we have a lot of practice at this,” Hardman said of the cleanup. “Hurricanes are occurring more frequently and we are learning lessons from each one. It can feel very overwhelming at times, but we are proactive and catching up on problems before they start. We are trying to prevent it.”
For those with a certain amount of wealth, such concerns may seem trivial. Naples’s grandest homes are built strong to withstand the wind, and despite the surrounding roads still being filled with water and sand, they are, as Savarese puts it, “an island in the middle of nowhere. Despite creating “homes”, many have their own pop-up seawalls or seawalls.
Port Royal was founded in the 1940s as the “best place to live in the world,” and the Gordon Point main residence, measuring 22,800 square feet with six bedrooms and 24 bathrooms, was designed to meet this goal. We strive for craftsmanship. It withstands everything that supercharged nature throws at it.
“This house is built with incredible building materials and is almost indestructible,” said Catherine Frattarola, who runs HUB Private Client, an insurance advisory service for wealthy individuals. Insuring real estate is “very expensive, seven figures a year,” he added, but people who can spend a third of $1 billion on a home “are in a completely different class. ” he added.
Such people “don’t really think about the risk. They think about how much they love Naples and, frankly, having the most expensive house in America,” Frattarola said. “They can easily make any repairs.”
But those outside the billionaire class are beginning to frown at the rising cost of paradise, with customers who can spend $5 million to $10 million on a beach house now choosing to buy in the Carolinas or Georgia. Frattalola said they are starting to look toward the state’s coasts.
“We’re seeing more and more conversations about ring-fenced assets to pay for individual insurance,” she said. “Now it’s like, ‘Oh, I have to find and pay for insurance?'” People are starting to look at different regions. ”
Of course, most Americans live much more frugally than this, and even if they can cover insurance premiums that have skyrocketed in recent years, they often struggle to recover from major disasters. As the storm batters low-income beaches, wealthy people huddled on the beaches may be the last ones left until Southwest Florida is completely engulfed by the tide.
Parinitha Sastry, a financial expert at Columbia Business School who has researched vulnerabilities in Florida’s insurance market, said, “The wealthiest people live in areas with high climate risk, and it is important to subsidize flood insurance.” “It’s worth thinking about who the beneficiaries are when disbursing money,” he said.
“With risk-based pricing, we may see a kind of climate inequality, but the alternative is that we have more vulnerable people in high-risk regions facing continued shocks. ” she said. “Housing is a major source of wealth, so without price signals, low-income earners are even more likely to lose their major asset.”
The next hurricane is unlikely to have a life-changing impact on Gordon Point’s new owners. Whoever buys this secluded property on the edge of a peninsula, with the waves as their only neighbors, won’t even bother people. As the promotional video says, “No cars pass by, no one looks in your window.” The development is a “rare and exceptional asset”. The real estate company that sold the property did not respond to questions about climate change risks.
But is it, or any home, actually worth $295 million? “A banana attached to a canvas can sell for $6.2 million,” Frattarola said, referring to recent sales of eye-catching artwork. “I think there are buyers for anything at all kinds of prices, if someone is willing to pay for it.”
