Under the Sea is No Place to Be (for a Home)

When Sebastian the Crab sang “Darling, it's better, down where it's wetter,” he was not referring to the U.S. housing market. Indeed, a new study by Zillow finds nearly two million homes—just under two percent of the national housing inventory, worth a cumulative $882 billion—would be submerged if the oceans rise by six feet by the year 2100.

In case you are wondering, the six feet of rising oceans by 2100 figure was established by research published in the scientific journal Nature, with the oceanographic chaos created by melting Antarctic ice sheets. If this scenario plays out, the result would be the watery erasure of one in eight homes in Florida, more than nine percent of homes in Hawaii (including 81 percent of residences in the capital city of Honolulu), and half of the homes in nearly 300 cities. On top of that, 36 coastal cities would be entirely underwater.

And, it appears, the more affluent homeowners would be the ones left (pardon the express) high and dry by their underwater properties: the at-risk homes along the waterfront are 58 percent more valuable than the average U.S. home.

"As we move through this century, homeowners will have to consider another factor when it comes to their homes–whether rising sea levels have any impact on them," said Zillow Chief Economist Svenja Gudell. "It's easy to think about how the ocean levels can affect the coasts in an abstract sense, but this analysis shows the real impact it will have on nearly two million homeowners—and most likely more by the time we reach 2100— who could lose their homes."