The itemizing for 6519 E. Seaside Walk in Long Beach, CA, still reads, in locations, like an commercial for California beachfront luxurious.
The 4,880-square-foot home has 4 bedrooms, six loos, panoramic ocean and bay views, a wine cellar, sauna, and elevator.
It hit the market in late August for $4.95 million—then the seashore in entrance of it gave means.
Weeks after highly effective 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 itemizing opens with a very totally different gross sales pitch: “Property has been RED TAGGED and is LAND VALUE.”
It may be an excessive instance of a drawback California now expects to confront on a much bigger scale.
Without intervention, 24% to 75% of the state’s seashores could disappear seasonally or completely by 2100 as seas rise, according to fashions cited in California’s newly launched Fifth Climate Change Assessment. It warns that “highly developed areas of Southern California [face] especially severe losses.”
Stormy climate hits the Peninsula in Long Beach, Calif., Sunday, Oct. 11, 2026. Jon Putman for CA Post
The shoreline is retreating into a much more costly housing market
A seashore is sediment in movement: Waves and currents choose up and deposit sand, regularly erasing and redrawing the shoreline.
Andy Carter, the itemizing agent for Seaside Walk, has labored in Southern California real estate for more than 20 years and is a third-generation Long Beach resident. He says erosion had worsened step by step for years—but what has occurred this fall is totally different.
“The entire front of the house is basically slowly cracking off and falling into the Pacific,” Carter tells Realtor.com®.
Damage started with Hurricane Marie in September, worsened with Hurricane Polo, and continued in October as Tropical Storm Rachel despatched another southerly swell toward the coast. Each spherical of surf carried away more sand, narrowing the seashore that usually absorbs some of the waves’ power before it reaches the properties behind it.
It’s the heartbreaking instance of a course of that is taking part in out en masse in coastal markets across the nation.
“Erosion can often be seen as a terrible thing for buyers and homeowners, but it’s a critical part of maintaining a healthy coastal ecosystem,” Bryan McCormack, a coastal processes specialist with WHOI Sea Grant and Cape Cod Cooperative Extension, instructed Realtor.com in July.
U.S. Geological Survey publicity information exhibits how much current property intersects modeled shoreline-change hazards—the areas where the shoreline is projected to transfer inland as rising seas and erosion reshape the coast.
At 1 meter, or about 3.3 ft, of sea-level rise, roughly $6.6 billion in mixed land and enchancment parcel worth falls within those zones. At 3 meters, or about 9.8 ft, the determine grows to almost $24.7 billion.
But those greenback figures use a 2020 reference yr and parcel values—not present market costs. Since then, values have skyrocketed.
Scenes are pictured on the Long Beach Peninsula on Friday, Oct. 16, 2026. Jon Putman for CA Post
In an aerial view, crews construct a sand berm in entrance of properties close to Belmont Shore Beach, Thursday, Oct. 22, 2026, in Long Beach, Calif. The Long Beach Peninsula is bracing for renewed coastal flooding and erosion as an incoming storm brings rain, doable thunderstorms and harmful surf, following weeks of highly effective waves that have broken beachfront properties and boardwalks. Getty Images
“Home sale prices have risen about 39% on average in these counties since 2020, so the actual value of exposed property is likely higher than the 2020-based assessments,” explains Hannah Jones, senior economist at Realtor.com.
But Jones cautions against merely making use of those positive factors to the USGS whole.
“Prop 13 caps assessment growth at 2% a year until a sale, so long-held coastal parcels can be assessed well below market,” she says. “The net effect is hard to read from county-level data, because at-risk properties could see flat or falling values while the county median rises.”
The surrounding markets have nevertheless become far more costly. Orange County’s median sale price rose 61% from about $783,000 in 2020 to $1.26 million in the first seven months of 2026. San Diego County rose 53%, Los Angeles County 41%, and Santa Barbara County 83%.
The luxurious finish has moved even larger. Homes at the ninety fifth percentile now start around $4.3 million in Orange County, $4.1 million in Los Angeles County, $3.2 million in San Diego County, and $5.3 million in Santa Barbara County.
And across California’s 15 coastal counties, six now have median sale costs above $1 million and 10 have luxurious thresholds above $3 million.
A view of the Wedge in Newport Beach, California, on Saturday, Oct. 10, 2026, as space prepares for an incoming storm. Jon Putman for CA Post
In an aerial view, sandy water is pumped onto the seashore as crews reinforce a sand berm close to Belmont Shore Beach on Thursday, October 22, 2026, in Long Beach, California. The Long Beach Peninsula is bracing for renewed coastal flooding and erosion as an incoming storm brings rain, doable thunderstorms and harmful surf, following weeks of highly effective waves that have broken beachfront properties and boardwalks. Getty Images
Who pays to maintain the shoreline in place?
But there’s an important qualifier in the evaluation’s projection that 24% to 75% of California’s seashores could disappear: without intervention.
Coastal communities around the nation usually take motion to help protect their shorelines. That can take the type of including sand, restoring dunes and other natural buffers, building seawalls or rock revetments, or relocating development away from the advancing shoreline.
The initiatives can be costly, but with billions of {dollars} of property uncovered, there is a highly effective incentive to act before the waves hit properties—and Long Beach has been doing so for years.
A California Coastal Commission report discovered that harbor construction, river dams, flood-control constructions, and marina jetties had “essentially eliminated all sources of natural sand supply” to the jap Peninsula. With less sand arriving naturally, the metropolis spends roughly $1 million to $1.5 million a yr transferring it back.
This fall, though, those efforts weren’t enough. The current harm has added more than $1 million in emergency public prices, and the metropolis is now transferring ahead with a bigger $11.4 million dredging and beach-nourishment project.
Carter argues it came too late.
“I feel it could have been prevented because every homeowner down there has been, you know, screaming about this for a very long time,” he says.
But the state’s evaluation also factors to a drawback with some kinds of intervention: Protecting the development can come at the expense of the seashore.
An aerial view exhibits broken properties being impacted by waves during high tide at Belmont Shore Beach on Thursday, Oct. 22, 2026, in Long Beach, Calif. The Long Beach Peninsula is bracing for renewed coastal flooding and erosion as an incoming storm brings rain, doable thunderstorms and harmful surf, following weeks of highly effective waves that have broken beachfront properties and boardwalks. Getty Images
“All of the sediment that gets eroded goes to feeding downdrift beaches and coastal habitats,” McCormack explains. “When the shoreline is armored, we interrupt this natural process, often leading to sediment-starved beaches and significant adverse impacts to the natural system.”
While a seawall or rock revetment may maintain the landward edge in place, as sea stage rises, the ocean retains advancing, ultimately trapping the seashore between the water and fixed development—a course of the evaluation calls “coastal squeeze.” It warns that arduous armoring can “prevent beaches from migrating inland, leading to beach loss and decreased biodiversity.”
That trade-off is already seen at scale in the Golden State. About 14% of California’s roughly 1,100-mile shoreline was armored as of 2018, according to the Surfrider Foundation, including more than a third of Southern California’s coast.
Hard to defend, more durable to go away
And erosion is only one means rising seas threaten coastal property. The state’s evaluation tasks average sea-level rise of about 3.1 ft under its intermediate situation to 6.6 ft under its high situation by 2100.
With 3.3 ft of sea-level rise, coastal flooding alone could expose about 201,000 people and $78 billion in property, even without a storm. Rising groundwater could attain farther still, exposing 1.9 million coastal residents and $480 billion in property.
They are less seen dangers than waves washing away a home’s basis, but they can start eroding its worth nicely before it is red-tagged. In coastal Florida, gross sales volumes in the most uncovered communities fell 16% to 20% relative to less-exposed areas before costs totally adjusted.
Yet Carter says curiosity in Seaside Walk is still there.
“I’m getting a ton of phone calls from builders,” he says.
Carter estimates comparable oceanfront heaps along the broken stretch stay value roughly $2.5 million. Some builders are in assembling neighboring parcels and ultimately changing the broken properties with new luxurious construction.
They’re making a totally different calculation than the typical purchaser: not that the hazard will disappear, but that oceanfront land may stay worthwhile enough to justify the risk—particularly if the seashore in entrance of it continues to be defended.
“Once they finally build out the beach,” Carter says, “those home values are going to go up significantly.”
It’s a excellent encapsulation of the bind dealing with California’s most costly coastal communities. The more worthwhile the land stays, the stronger the incentive to defend it. And the more efficiently the shoreline is protected, the longer that worth—and the strain to keep defending it—can persist.
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