Malibu Climate Stampede: Rich and Famous Buying the High Ground

When it gets down into the mere “hundreds” of thousands, I buy!

First real estate story: “Buy land. They’re not making any more of the stuff.”

Second: What is the worth of a piece of real estate? “The value of real estate is what a willing buyer will offer and what a willing seller will accept.”

Third: What are the three most important aspects of real property? “Location, location, location.”

In rough sum, these three axioms rule what happens to a piece of real property. The sum is rough because of all the ancillary details, including subsidence, erosion, avulsion*, and other natural and artificial causes of change. In this case, of course, the sea level rise is mostly imaginary, so the changes in value are also mostly imaginary; but if buyer and seller agree, the price will be paid in real money.

Fourth: “A fool and his money are soon parted.”

*Avulsion is the sudden loss of land due to earthquake, tsunami, or the like. Under current US real estate law, as I recall, land lost by avulsion remains the property of the owner, even though the land itself is no longer there. In other words, if the sea level rises quite suddenly and your seaside estate is reduced overnight from 10 acres to 1, you still own where those 10 acres had been. Sales price may suffer, though.

We’ve had our fun but the real reason for moving off the beach is privacy. California law you only own to the mean high tide line. No private beaches.

Plenty of prime, oceanfront land here:
http://i.imgur.com/zpnOV39.jpg

From Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, Charles MacKay, London, 1852:
“A still more singular instance of the faith in predictions occurred in London in the year 1524. The city swarmed at that time with fortune-tellers and astrologers, who were consulted daily by people of every class in society on the secrets of futurity. As early as the month of June 1523, several of them concurred in predicting that on the 1st day of February 1524, the waters of the Thames would swell to such a height as to overflow the whole city of London, and wash away ten thousand houses. The prophecy met implicit belief. It was reiterated with the utmost confidence month after month, until so much alarm was excited that many a family packed up their goods, and removed to Kent and Essex. As the time drew nigh, the number of these emigrants increased. In January, droves of workmen might be seen followed by their wives and children, trudging on foot to the villages within fifteen or twenty miles, to await the catastrophe. People of a higher class were also to be seen, in waggons and other vehicles, bound on a similar errand. By the middle of January, at least twenty thousand persons had quitted the doomed city, leaving but the bare walls of their homes to be swept away by the impending floods. Many of the richer sort took up their abode on the heights of Highgate, Hampstead, and Blackheath; and some erected tents as far away as Waltham Abbey, on the north and Croydon, on the south of the Thames. Bolton, the prior of St. Bartholomew’s, was so alarmed that he erected at very great expense, a sort of fortress on Harrow-on-the-Hill, which he stocked with provisions for two months. On the 24th of January, a week before the awful day which was to see the destruction of London, he removed thither, with the brethren and officers of the prior and all his household. A number of boats were conveyed in waggons to his fortress, furnished abundantly with expert rowers, in case the flood, reaching so high as Harrow, should force them to go further for a resting-place. Many wealthy citizens prayed to share his retreat, but the Prior, with a prudent forethought, admitted only his personal friends, and those who brought stores of eatables for the blockade.
“At last the morn, big with the fate of London, appeared in the east. The wondering crowds were astir at an early hour to watch the rising of the waters. The inundation, it was predicted, would be grad¬ual, not sudden; so that they expected to have plenty of time to escape, as soon as they saw the bosom of old Thames heave beyond the usual mark. But the majority were too much alarmed to trust to this, and thought themselves safer ten or twenty miles off. The Thames, unmindful of the foolish crowds upon its banks, flowed on quietly as of yore. The tide ebbed at its usual hour, flowed to its usual height, and then ebbed again, just as if twenty astrologers had not pledged their words to the contrary. Blank were their faces as evening approached and as blank grew the faces of the citizens to think that they had made such fools of themselves. At last night set in, and the obstinate river would not lift its waters to sweep away even one house out of the ten thousand. Still, however, the people were afraid to go to sleep. Many hundreds remained up till dawn of the next day, lest the deluge should come upon them like a thief in the night.
“On the morrow, it was seriously discussed whether it would not be advisable to duck the false prophets in the river. Luckily for them, they thought of an expedient which allayed the popular fury. They asserted that, by an error (a very slight one) of a little figure, they had fixed the date of this awful inundation a whole century too early. The stars were right after all, and they, erring mortals, were wrong. The present generation of cockneys was safe, and London would be washed away, not in 1524, but in 1624. At this announcement, Bolton, the prior, dismantled his fortress, and the weary emigrants came back.”

Wonder what fire insurance is like in the hills:

Footage of 2007 fires, which got out of control, ran down the hills, crossed the highway and consumed beach front property.

In an asteroid strike the people on the higher ground will perish microseconds before the rest of us: it’s just not worth the risk!