On the Jersey Shore, Surf’s Up — Way Up
Beach towns are getting more expensive even as they become more vulnerable to climate change.
A timeless scene from the Jersey Shore. This happens to be Long Branch in June 2020.
Photographer: Michael Loccisano/Getty Images North AmericaIn New Jersey’s beach towns, there are two sets of data that always seem to be rising: property values and sea levels. Neither phenomenon is particularly subtle, and eventually their trajectories will collide. But no one buying property seems to think it will happen today — or maybe ever.
“The two things that I’m amazed by are the prices that people are paying and the age of the people who are paying the prices,” says Allan Dechert, who has been a real estate agent for decades on the seven-mile-long barrier island that hosts, for now, the towns of Avalon and Stone Harbor. Many of the people buying vacation homes, he says, are young and don’t need a mortgage.