Microblog Memes

I was talking to some friends last weekend, and one of them said that they had previously owned a house on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. I said, "I love the Outer Banks, love visiting it, but I would never buy real estate there." He said, "Yeah, it took a couple years for us to figure that out."

Of course, the islands are basically giant sandbars, and there's the sea level rise issue. But I hadn't considered that the environment is just that much harder on houses - roofs need to be replaced more often, wood rots more quickly, and so on - and that's not even including a hurricane coming through. When the kind kicks up, which happens pretty regularly there, the house is getting sandblasted. The maintenance costs are much higher compared to an inland house, and I assume insurance is much higher, and so on.

They rented it out to vacationers to help offset that cost, but they found that they weren't breaking even - they have to charge competitive rates to get customers, but those rates weren't covering all of the major upcoming expenses.

But, there's still a market for houses there. I imagine the recent images in the news of houses collapsing into the water have to be having an effect, but the bottom doesn't seem to be falling out like you'd think.