By Christopher Flavelle
Sea-level rise is already hitting home prices along the Atlantic Coast, new data shows -- and nowhere harder than the tiny New Jersey town of Ocean City.
Between 2005 and 2017, increased tidal flooding erased $14.1 billion in relative home values across eight states, according to research by First Street Foundation, a Brooklyn-based nonprofit that seeks to quantify the effects of climate change on coastal communities. The group found that 820,000 homes are now worth less than they would have been otherwise, including 75,000 homes in New York State and 15,000 in Connecticut.
When First Street broke those impacts down by zip code, the most concentrated losses turned up in small New Jersey towns. Ocean City, New Jersey, with just 11,000 residents, has lost $530 million in potential increases in property value since 2005.
The state where climate change has hurt home prices the most is Florida, where rising seas and flooding wiped out $5.4 billion in relative value.
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