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 biggest news, opinion and culture shaping California right now.

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Never miss a story A beach is sediment in motion: Waves and currents pick up and deposit sand, continually erasing and redrawing the shoreline.Andy Carter, the listing agent for Seaside Walk, has worked in Southern California real estate for more than 20 years and is a third-generation Long Beach resident.He says erosion had worsened gradually for years—but what has happened this fall is different.“The entire front of the house is basically slowly cracking off and falling into the Pacific,” Carter tells Realtor.com.Damage began with Hurricane Marie in September, worsened with Hurricane Polo, and continued in October as Tropical Storm Rachel sent...