Talk about waterfront property. (A real bargain!)

Nantucket is beautiful. Plenty beautiful. And quaint. Plenty quaint. And swanky. Plenty swanky.

Rich folks. Famous folks. Rich and famous folk wannabes. They all want to have a home there. 

Or so I hear. I've only been there once, and that was when I was in high school. I do remember the beauty, the quaint, the swank. And while way back then, I didn't have all that much consciousness of rich and/or famous, I was still vaguely aware that rich and/or famous folks hung out there. 

But most of what I know about Nantucket is what I hear on the news, read in the newspapers.

And part of what I know from all that hearing and reading is that a lot of Nantucket's waterfront property is under siege from the elements.

Every once in a while, usually (but not always) after a storm, there's a story about a house that just a very short while ago was on the waterfront with plenty of nice beachfront frontage is now teetering on the edge of a sandcliff, ready to fall into the drink. Sometimes the house is shown jacked up and ready to be moved a couple of hundred feet back. Good luck with that, of course. A couple of hundred feet worth of front yard can be eroded away in a couple of weeks. (Remember the kiddo Bible ditty about the foolish man building his house upon the sand? I do believe that Nantucket is all sand. So much for the wisdom or the rich and/or famous.)

Despite a number of "house overboard" occurrences, rich folks, famous folks, rich and famous folk wannabes, and - I guess - just plain folks with some money who just love Nantucket, still spend plenty of $$$  to live there. Especially on the waterfront, where most properties will run you a few million. (Median price of a home on Nantucket is $3.2M.)

But this past winter, a waterfront house - 3 bed, 2 bath, mahogany deck, "incredible views of the Atlantic Ocean and the serene sound of rolling waves"  - hit the market for the low, low price of $600K. Especially amazing given that, just last September, this place was listed for $2.3M. Hmmm. There must be a catch beyond the ominous catch-all words in the listing: Property is being sold "AS IS." Hmmm, hmmm, hmmmmmmm.

The catch was that last fall the home "lost a stunning 70 feet to erosion in just a matter of weeks, putting the home at imminent risk."

Never fear: someone was willing to buy a charmer, whatever the risk.

A longtime visitor to Nantucket, Brendan Maddigan, who lives in New York, toyed with owning a summer home there for his young family for years. He regularly scanned the market and bookmarked links to a half-dozen properties, including the house on Sheep Pond Road. When he got an alert the price had nosedived, he submitted an all-cash offer, and in February the home was his.

From growing up in Woods Hole and now working for a real estate investment firm in New York City, Maddigan, 42, said he is clear-eyed about the risks, especially as sea levels rise and storms become more intense.

“The home is amazing. The location is amazing. And the price mitigates the risk to a good degree,” he said. “I’d like to think that it’ll be there for a while, but I was definitely aware of the risk of any particular storm causing a problem in the future.” (Source: Boston Globe)

Now Brendan Maddigan is no dummy. I may have way too much faith in an MIT education, but Maddigan is an MIT grad, with a mechanical engineering degree with additional focus in management, entrepreneurship, and history. So he no doubt gets the mechanics of a solidly built house. He's had a very successful career in the world of commercial real estate. And that fact that he's had a long-standing interest in entrepreneurship suggests he's a risk taker. But I've got to question that minor concentration in history, given that the recent history of this house having lost nearly all of its frontage in a matter of weeks. Even if the bargain price "mitigates the risk to a good degree."

Hmmmm, etc.

Maybe Brendan Maddigan can afford to spend $600K on a house that might not be there by summertime. Maybe it's such a pittance, that he'll be happy to get one or two summers out of it, and if that doesn't happen, well, shrug.

I don't think I'd sleep all that deeply there, give the "incredible views of the Atlantic Ocean and the serene sound of rolling waves." Those "incredible views" now appear to be just 10 feet away from the front porch, when last summer they were 80 feet away. And I don't know how "serene" the "sound of rolling waves" will be if they're lapping the foundation of your house. 

This isn't the only property on Nantucket that's being "permanently devalued." As erosion continues to occur, as the island's coastline recedes, more and more houses will plummet in price like this one. (It's estimated that hundreds of houses are presently at risk, and over 2,000 at risk by 2070.) Cautious sellers will no doubt sell out. Wait-and-see owners will wait and see. And risk takers like Maddigan will roll the dice that it'll take a while before their waterfront property turns into a houseboat.  

Recent history suggests that catastrophe isn't that far off. A home in Maddigan's new neighborhood "was demolished in October after losing approximately 35 feet of dune in a matter of months." 

Maddigan is planning on building a berm, but that might not do much good. Last fall, some waterfront property homeowners on Boston's North Shore - in a town far less beautiful, quaint, swanky, rich and/or famous than Nantucket - spent $600K on a berm, most of which washed away during a single storm this winter.

But, shrug, Maddigan's hoping that he gets lucky and that his kids end up with some fond memories of their summer home. 

Good lucky to him!