[nabla9]

What happens 50 years from now should matter relatively little for people living there now. Property owners and banks start discounting the resale value of the land and large property investments, but it's gradual process.

After discounting property values, Miami will be cheaper place to live in the future and that means that it may attract even more people.

[acdha]

> What happens 50 years from now should matter relatively little for people living there now. Property owners and banks start discounting the resale value of the land and large property investments, but it's gradual process.

You’re missing a lot of the details explained in the article: this isn’t something like a predictable 2% tax but something which fails significantly at unknown intervals when a bad storm hits, or when infrastructure is overwhelmed and goes from functional to unusable all at once. That leads to highly correlated failures on a large scale: everyone in your zip code can’t get insurance, the entire city needs key infrastructure replaced at the same time, etc. and those also affect the desirability of the area and its ability to attract businesses, tourism, etc. That’s a recipe for volatility and in many cases the potential savings on property values are going to be significantly canceled by higher taxes to pay for all of that infrastructure and increased maintenance costs.

[nabla9]

I don't see how not enumerating details that reduce property values (like repair and maintenance cost and cost of insurance) changes anything I said.

Investing includes risk management. You can discount the abrupt disruptions into the price. Everything you say reduces the value of the property. Eventually large areas will be abandoned but until that happens people can live there.

[acdha]

The distinction is that this is widespread new risk without accurate actuarial data. Someone looking at buying a house today doesn’t just have to wonder whether the value will be zero in 50 years but whether it might be 30% the next time a big storm causes enough damage that people don’t just rebuild, which could happen much sooner than that. Once there’s an event which makes it hard to get insurance, mortgages, or utilities the values can drop very quickly and you won’t have much advanced notice.

[nabla9]

That's probably how the end comes. So much damage that it's not worth rebuilding even cheaper and temporary.

But as I said, until that happens people will live, property values will decrease and stuff that is rebuild will be build cheaper.

What will most likely happen first is "climate centrification" within Miami. Poor people in high elevations will be move out when land value increases. Low elevation areas become new low income neighborhoods.

[acdha]

That’s a big change from your earlier “What happens 50 years from now should matter relatively little for people living there now”. People need to plan now for those big disruptions because they’re either going to live long enough to be directly affected, because any buyer will be taking that into account, or both. Miami won’t go to zero overnight but everyone should assume that the next 50 years will be quite different from the past 50.

[nabla9]

That's not a change from my earlier.

People who rent or live in cheap property just move and other people come in. Property values change gentrification happens but that's usual for a big city.

If you move to Miami now and have children, you can raise them in next 20 years and move elsewhere in next 30 years.

[stevekemp2]

Like all the people flooding to live in Baltimore, now property is so cheap?

Sadly the idea that price alone affects desirability is a little niave.

[Amygaz]

Except that it will cost a lot more to build, insure and maintain.

That being said, I wouldn’t be surprised if people with too much money start buying just to have bragging rights on a magnificent view of the sea level rise.

[nabla9]

> Except that it will cost a lot more to build, insure and maintain.

Those are not counterarguments. Increasing running costs directly decrease property values. The property value vs. replacement property value will adjust.

Consider normal case whre property price is $1M, upkeep an maintenance etc. cost is $10k per year and investor gets $70k in rent.

Now change it to property price being $100k, yearly cost $30k per year and investor gets $60k in rent.

Witch one has better ROI?