Patrick Flanary: No one knows when the next major hurricane could hit the Cape, Coast, and Islands. But if and when the big one comes, it will bring days of wind, waves, and worries. And then the skies will clear. The economic impacts, on the other hand, could last for years. CAI’s Eve Zuckoff has details on how that could play out long term, and joins us now for the third installment of our series on hurricane preparedness. Hi Eve.
Eve Zuckoff: Hi Patrick.
Patrick Flanary: The Cape’s housing market is so much more dominated by vacation rentals and second homes than other parts of the state. How might a major storm impact our unique real estate market?
Eve Zuckoff: Well, to answer that we can look at places like the Jersey Shore, which has a really similar real estate market to the Cape and Islands. So I talked with Rutgers professor Clinton Andrews, who’s studied how that state’s coastal real estate market was affected by Hurricane Sandy in 2012. Here’s what he said:
“The houses that were affected by Sandy that suffered damage, for three years they were worth less than neighboring houses, but by year four the market had forgotten. And they were worth just as much as neighboring houses,” he said.
In some markets, it takes even less time to see this collective forgetting to set in. And locally, this is good news for some homeowners who want to know their investment is safe, but it’s really concerning for people who are already struggling to buy. And it makes conditions even harder for year round renters.