, Columnist
Climate Change Turns Coastal Property Into a Junk Bond
The returns can be great, unless the investment winds up under water.
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A friend of mine who is a bit of a climate-change skeptic once challenged me with this question: If climate change is such a pressing danger, why haven’t coastal real estate prices crashed?
It’s a fair question. If financial markets are even close to efficient, and if everyone knows climate change is about to flood the coasts, then it stands to reason that buyers would be shunning any real estate in the path of rising sea levels. Prices should retreat, at least somewhere.