The appeal of seaside properties is stronger than rising waters

A geographer at the University of Western Brittany (UBO), Eugénie Cazaux began to take an interest in the subject in 2015-2016, during a mission to the Office of Flood and Coastal Risks at the Ministry of Ecology.

The problem of coastal erosion then took on an imminent character with the case of the Le Signal building in Soulac-sur-Mer (Gironde), threatened by the advancing sea. "I had learned that people had continued to buy at market price in this residence until 2011-2012," she told AFP.

The building will be evacuated a few years later, in January 2014, by decree of imminent danger, before being destroyed in February 2023.

"The assets offered by the sea are so great that there are people who will always find it beneficial to acquire these goods, regardless of the degree of exposure to coastal risks", assures Ms. Cazaux.

"Pleasure purchase"

To verify this intuition, the geographer used the national database of real estate land transactions between 2010 and 2016, as part of her thesis, defended in October 2022. She then compared this data to the erosion risk maps and submersion, before completing his research with interviews with real estate agents, elected officials and local authority managers.

"Unprecedented work on a national scale", salutes Didier Vye, lecturer in geography at the University of La Rochelle.

The researcher thus discovered a whole series of “buyer profiles” ready to buy “real estate threatened in the very short term by erosion”.

This ranges from investors who rent seasonally and "know that they will make the cost of acquiring their property profitable in a very short time", to retirees anxious to realize their dream of a life on the edge of sea, without forgetting the more affluent buyers "who operate on the impulse purchase", she describes.

"Today, there is a very strong gap between supply and demand on the coast. If a buyer retracts, there are ten behind ready to buy at the price", she says, describing the “optimism bias” of buyers who “put risk at a distance”.

Real estate agent in La Trinité-sur-Mer (Morbihan), Hervé Pinson (Côtes West Immobilier) does not say anything else: "Today, the problem is not to sell, it is to find the product."

“We have a good part of the clientele who buys knowingly.

They say: it will be flooded in 30 or 40 years, who cares, we take it anyway", he observes to AFP, speaking of "pleasure purchase" for houses whose price can reach 3 million euros.

No Xynthia effect

Even after the passage of Xynthia in February 2010 (53 dead), Ms. Cazaux failed to find any influence of the storm on property prices in the affected areas of Charente-Maritime.

"The prices never went down," she says. "The desire for shore remains stronger."

Some neighborhoods hit by the storm have even gained in attractiveness since the disaster, thanks to reconstruction work.

The persistence of high real estate prices in areas threatened in the long term by global warming raises the question of possible future compensation.

In the event of marine submersion, the "Natural disaster" scheme, paid by each French person on their home insurance, covers the repairs.

In other cases, public funds may be committed. Thus, the co-owners of Le Signal were compensated by the State for 70% of the value of their accommodation, which had nevertheless become negative.

"We have created a form of precedent", points out the researcher, who believes that this can prevent the emergence of a "culture of responsibility" among coastal residents.