In a Florida Town Ravaged by Storms, Homeowners All Want to Sell
Ballooning home insurance costs and the perennial threat of violent storms hit Tampa Bay housing market hard
Ballooning home insurance costs and the perennial threat of violent storms hit Tampa Bay housing market hard
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla.—Kellen Driscoll bought his home here in 2019, settling in the coastal enclave of Shore Acres. It flooded for the first time four years ago after tropical storm Eta dumped more than 3 feet of water.
Hoping it was a fluke, Driscoll tore out the affected drywall and started fresh. After all, the four-bedroom home built in 1960 had no flood history.
But then it happened again, and again. Like many others in the community, he put his home up for sale in the spring of this year. After seeing little interest, he cut the asking price.
On Friday, Hurricane Helene deposited more than 6 feet of storm surge in the neighbourhood. The rushing waters ripped the “For Sale” sign off his front lawn, and etched a waterline that reached halfway up his front door, just underneath the doorbell. He reduced the asking price for a fifth time.
“We flooded here four times in the last four years,” said Driscoll, as he threw his television sets, furniture, appliances and other belongings to the curb. “I’m just hoping I can sell the house. It’s a good neighbourhood for sure, but dealing with the floods is horrible.”
In the Tampa Bay metropolitan area, which includes St. Petersburg, a real-estate boom nearly doubled median home values from 2018 to June of this year, according to Redfin data. Young people flocked to the region, looking for a coastal lifestyle at a relatively affordable price.
The Tampa Bay metro area was the fifth most popular relocation destination in the country, according to an analysis by Redfin last year. The population has soared to more than three million.
But as Shore Acres’s young residents sorted through the storm’s wreckage, only one thing was on their minds: selling.
Ballooning home insurance costs and the perennial threat of violent storms are starting to undermine housing markets throughout much of the state. But in few places has the turnaround been more dramatic than in low-lying communities up and down the coast of Florida that frequently flood.
The Tampa Bay housing market had been softening even before Helene struck. While prices have been flat, the area experienced a 58% increase in supply in August compared with a year ago, and a 10% decrease in demand, according to Parcl Labs, a real-estate data and analytics firm.
About half the homes listed for sale in Tampa experienced price reductions as of Sept. 9, the third highest share of all U.S. major metropolitan areas.
“Tampa was already heading in this direction before the hurricane hit,” said Jason Lewris, co-founder of Parcl Labs. “This hurricane may compound the market dynamics that have been occurring there over the last few months.”
While Tampa escaped a direct hit from the eye of the hurricane, it was the worst storm to hit the area in a century. The hurricane also plowed into landlocked towns well north, causing heavy damage in the Carolinas where people were just beginning to absorb the scope of ruin.
Bradley Tennant’s home flooded last year. But to avoid all the competition, he was waiting a year to put it up for sale.
“We saw the glut of homes for sale in the spring and thought, ‘What are the chances it’ll hit again the next year?’” said Tennant, as he cleared out the soaked contents of his waterfront home. “We went 50 years without a storm that flooded the house. So we thought, let’s roll the dice.”
While he paid around $350,000 for the house about seven years ago, Tennant says he received offers as high as $800,000 during the height of the market—before last year’s storm hit. Now he’s hoping to sell as soon as he’s able to renovate.
The area’s affordability, once a large part of its appeal, is also waning as insurance premiums soar. Jacob McFadden was paying $880 a year to insure his home when he bought it in 2020. That amount has since almost quadrupled, to $3,300.
Premiums will likely increase again now. Property damage from last week’s Category 4 storm could be as high as $26 billion, according to estimates from Moody’s Analytics.
“I don’t know how much longer I’m going to do this waterfront living,” McFadden said, standing in front of his home with a wheelbarrow and his home’s contents scattered around the front yard. “This may be the end.”
Dustin Pentz bought his home 10 years ago, and was one of the lucky few to avoid flooding. That is until Hurricane Helene. When police blocked his car from entering the neighbourhood, he paddleboarded his way home to assess the damage.
His fridge was knocked over, and the water reached up as high as his mattress. Unfortunately, his flood insurance doesn’t cover the contents of his home. A tree in his backyard fell over and hit the corner of his roof, but he was unsure that the damage would hit his $8,500 wind deductible.
“This neighbourhood’s amazing, great schools. But no one wants to deal with this all the time,” said Pentz. “It sucks because no one wants to live here anymore. There are so many houses for sale and no one’s buying.”
Down the street, Domonique Tomlinson and her husband, Leon Tomlinson, filed a claim for items they lost in last year’s flood. They didn’t want to go through the headache of filing another claim for the contents of their home this year, with a separate $5,000 deductible.
Two days before Hurricane Helene hit, they rented a moving van to haul many of their belongings to a storage unit. She bought her home four years ago for around $199,000. Because property values have increased so much in her area, she hopes to break even. But now she says she’s not so sure.
Tomlinson, who is a teacher, and her husband, who works as a manager at a grocery store, worry that people like them will be priced out of the area because they can’t afford the preventive measures and insurance.
“Basically the only people that are going to be able to live back here are rich people who can build up,” she said.
This stylish family home combines a classic palette and finishes with a flexible floorplan
Just 55 minutes from Sydney, make this your creative getaway located in the majestic Hawkesbury region.
For every hotel spotlighting its historical bona fides, there are many that didn’t stand the test of time. Here, some of the most infamous.
Many luxury hotels only build on their gilded reputations with each passing decade. But others are less fortunate. Here are five long-gone grandes dames that fell from grace—and one that persists, but in a significantly diminished form.
A magnet for celebrities, the Garden of Allah was once the scene-making equivalent of today’s Chateau Marmont. Frank Sinatra and Ava Gardner’s affair allegedly started there and Humphrey Bogart lived in one of its bungalows for a time.
Crimean expat Alla Nazimova leased a grand home in Hollywood after World War I, but soon turned it into a hotel, where she prioritised glamorous clientele. Others risked being ejected by guards and a fearsome dog dubbed the Hound of the Baskervilles. Demolished in the 1950s, the site’s now a parking lot.
The Astor family hoped to repeat their success when they opened this sequel to their megahit Waldorf Astoria hotel in 1904. It became an anchor of the nascent Theater District, buzzy (and naughty) enough to inspire Cole Porter to write in “High Society”: “Have you heard that Mimsie Starr…got pinched in the Astor Bar?”
That bar soon gained another reputation. “Gentlemen who preferred the company of other gentlemen would meet in a certain section of the bar,” said travel expert Henry Harteveldt of consulting firm Atmosphere Research. By the 1960s, the hotel had lost its lustre and was demolished; the 54-storey One Astor Plaza skyscraper was built in its place.
In the 1950s, colonial officers around Africa treated Mozambique as an off-duty playground. They flocked, in particular, to the Santa Carolina, a five-star hotel on a gorgeous archipelago off the country’s southern coast.
Run by a Portuguese businessman and his wife, the resort included an airstrip that ferried visitors in and out. Ask locals why the place was eventually reduced to rubble, and some whisper that the couple were cursed—and that’s why no one wanted to take over when the business collapsed in the ’70s. Today, seeing the abandoned, crumbled ruins and murals bleached by the sun, it’s hard to dismiss their superstitions entirely.
The overwater bungalow, a shorthand for barefoot luxury around the world, began in French Polynesia—but not with the locals. Instead, it was a marketing gimmick cooked up by a trio of rascally Americans. They moved to French Polynesia in the late 1950s, and soon tried to capitalise on the newly built international airport and a looming tourism boom.
That proved difficult because their five-room hotel on the island of Raiatea lacked a beach. They devised a fix: building rooms on pontoons above the water. They were an instant phenomenon, spreading around the islands and the world—per fan site OverwaterBungalows.net , there are now more than 9,000 worldwide, from the Maldives to Mexico. That first property, though, is no more.
The Ricker family started out as innkeepers, running a stagecoach stop in Maine in the 1790s. When Hiram Ricker took over the operation, the family expanded into the business by which it would make its fortune: water. Thanks to savvy marketing, by the 1870s, doctors were prescribing Poland Spring mineral water and die-hards were making pilgrimages to the source.
The Rickers opened the Poland Spring House in 1876, and eventually expanded it to include one of the earliest resort-based golf courses in the country, a barber shop, dance studio and music hall. By the turn of the century, it was among the most glamorous resort complexes in New England.
Mismanagement eventually forced its sale in 1962, and both the water operation and hospitality holdings went through several owners and operators. While the water venture retains its prominence, the hotel has weathered less well, becoming a pleasant—but far from luxurious—mid-market resort. Former NYU hospitality professor Bjorn Hanson says attempts at upgrading over the decades have been futile. “I was a consultant to a developer in the 1970s to return the resort to its ‘former glory,’ but it never happened.”
This stylish family home combines a classic palette and finishes with a flexible floorplan
Just 55 minutes from Sydney, make this your creative getaway located in the majestic Hawkesbury region.