Exquisite Property!! "Severe" Flood Exposure, "Extreme" Wind Exposure, Inches Above Sea Level - And Only $295 Million!!
A sprawling Florida mansion set beside a powdery white sand beach overlooking the azure Gulf of Mexico is currently the most expensive property listed for sale in the United States, yours for a mere $295m. It is also in one of the most vulnerable places in the country to climate-driven disasters and faces an almost inevitable flooding event in the coming years.
The nine-acre gated retreat in Naples – styled as “Florida’s most exclusive compound” and complete with two vast guest houses, a dock, a yacht berth and facing water on three sides – stands as an extravagant symbol of how the desire for a balmy Florida lifestyle is colliding with the climate crisis. “It’s almost a certainty this property will experience a flood,” said Jeremy Porter, climate risk researcher at First Street Foundation, a non-profit flood analysis group. According to First Street modeling, the $295m Gordon Pointe property has a 68% risk of flooding in the next 15 years and an almost guaranteed 95% chance of a flood over the next three decades. Its flood exposure is “severe” and its risk from winds is “extreme” according to climate threat ratings that now appear on Zillow property listings.
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Mangroves, marshes and protective sand dunes have been swept aside here so multimillion-dollar developments can sit as close as possible to the sea, which is 6in higher than it was in the 1990s and is accelerating upwards due to the burning of fossil fuels. The threat to this idyll has been starkly illustrated by the five hurricanes that have rattled the western flank of Florida in just the last two years, most destructively with 2022’s Hurricane Ian and, more recently, the rapid one-two punch of Hurricanes Helene and Milton. Naples has seen its streets inundated, its homes torn apart and its pier wrecked by storms turbocharged by an overheated Gulf.
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This vulnerability has led to a jarring situation where the glittering crown jewel property in a destination state with booming population growth is threatened by climate-fueled disaster like few other places in the US. “They are just buying time, borrowed time,” Savarese said of the string of opulent homes in Port Royal. “We are following the more extreme curve of sea level rise and nuisance flooding is going to be even more of a concern at every high tide. We haven’t addressed this well and we have been caught with our pants down.”
There may still be willing buyers for luxury properties along the Florida coastline but the climate crisis is increasingly rubbing up against the prevailing trend of hordes of Americans, many of them retired, pouring into the state for the promise of warm weather and no state taxes. Home insurance rates in Florida, already the steepest in the US, rose by another 42%, on average, last year. Amid a cavalcade of disasters, at least a dozen insurers have fled Florida and a state backstop insurance system is now “not solvent” according to Ron DeSantis, Florida’s governor. DeSantis, meanwhile, has responded to this new era by deleting mention of climate change in state laws.
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https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/dec/03/most-expensive-property-flooding-florida
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