California Could Lose Up to 75% of Its Beaches—and Billions in Property Are Exposed

The listing for 6519 E. Seaside Walk in Long Beach, CA, still reads, in places, like an advertisement for California beachfront luxury.The 4,880-square-foot home has four bedrooms, six bathrooms, panoramic ocean and bay views, a wine cellar, sauna, and elevator. It hit the market in late August for $4.95 million—then the beach in front of it gave way.Weeks after powerful surf battered the Long Beach Peninsula, 13 residences were red-tagged as unsafe, including Seaside Walk. By mid-October, the home's asking price had fallen to $2.9 million—a $2.05 million price cut.And now, the once idyllic listing opens with a very different sales pitch: “Property has been RED TAGGED and is LAND VALUE.”It may be an extreme example of a problem California now expects to confront on a much larger scale.Without intervention, 24% to 75% of the state’s beaches could disappear seasonally or permanently by 2100 as seas rise, according to models cited in California’s newly released Fifth Climate Change Assessment. It warns that “highly developed areas of Southern California [face] especially severe losses.”The shoreline is retreating into a much more expensive housing marketA beach is sediment in motion: ...