Close to Home: Moving on or moving up as climate change looms
Jenny Easton moved out of her childhood seaside home near Nelson, because she didnt feel safe there any more. The environmental scientist was increasingly worried, as she approached retirement, that it was only a matter of time before the property she grew up in Mapua was flooded by the sea . Sand dunes on the beach next to the house in the Tasman district had gone, with just a rock wall remaining, she said. Trees were also dying on neighbouring properties due to salt water inundation, giving her little hope that the fruit and vegetables she wanted to grow would survive. READ MORE: * Just how safe from the rising sea level are our beach houses? * Retreat from sea among options as Thames-Coromandel plans for coastal change * Billions at stake as Government mulls sea level rules In 2011, Easton sold up and moved to the foothills of Nelson, where she retired and tends to her garden overlooking Tasman Bay, and the citys coastline a couple of kilometres away. Nine years on, some 20 kilometres north of Mapua, Te Wehi Ratana, sought to move his young family away from the rising sea. If we could, wed move tomorrow, said the 26-year-old, who lived in the centre of the low-lying coastal town of Motueka, with his partner and their three children. Ratana likened sea level rise to a black cloud hanging over their heads. Coastal inundation maps , released by Tasman District Council a year ago, confirmed their home was in a flood zone, he said. But the couple had been looking to move before then, after doing their own research about flood risks in the town, where most houses were on the flat. To be able to find somewhere that is within our price range is near impossible, because the minute you start looking in the country, youre looking at land, Ratana said. They had considered living in a bus, rather than being mortgaged to the eyeballs. But timing and location hadnt been right. The couple had also weighed up moving to an inland home in the Bay of Plenty, where Ratana is from. While the cost of insuring their home hadnt risen, the value of it had, according to online valuation and the price of houses sold nearby, he said. Local estate agent Leeon Johnston confirmed the council's inundation maps hadnt put people off buying homes in projected flood zones. People were also buying properties in Riwaka, north of Motueka, that were flooded after heavy rain during ex cyclone Gita in 2018, the owner of Harcourts in Mapua and Motueka said. "Generally if the flood waters haven't affected the house itself, then people don't seem to be too concerned." Owners had told them that insurance premiums on the houses had risen, Johnston said. But the price of the properties continued to hold firm, even rising in some areas, due to of a lack of properties on the market, he said. In Nelson, Janice Emery from RE/MAX Elite said the Kiwi dream of living in a beach front property in the city was still very much alive. It does depend on whether the property has experienced inundation already, but generally properties are holding their value, she said. A small segment of the buyer market was expressing concern about climate change, Emery said mostly younger people, who took more time trying to understand what the risks meant for them. A couple told Stuff they moved to a house on Nelsons Monaco peninsula shortly after ex cyclone Fehi flooded surrounding homes there in 2018. The man said they moved from a large modern house in a new subdivision in Stoke, where theyd lived for 22 years, to the modest house. Just living by the sea is something special. The benefits are way bigger, and the risks are way bigger. You can live in a boring new subdivision ... the wellbeing element to living there is minimal, compared to living in a small bach by the sea. They moved with their eyes wide open about sea level rise, he said. They had built a concrete wall at the front of the property, and used a flood gate to block the driveway. While they had used the gate a handful of times, the spring high tide at the end of August was the first time the sea had touched it. You can choose not to live there [seafront] and miss out on the opportunities a place like that offers, or you can choose to live there ... and you manage it the best you can. A 30-year-old woman told Stuff she decided not to make an offer on a house in central Nelson recently, after checking the city councils flood maps. Everything else about the house was great, the woman said. But she was put off by concerns coastal inundation would lead to increased insurance and maintenance costs. New mapping of coastal inundation in Nelson, commissioned by the city council, was due to be released later this year. The council said river flooding needed to be incorporated into sea level rise projections, and it would be inappropriate to release the maps to the public before then. Environmental law specialist, Catherine Iorns, said some home buyers were discounting sea level rise on at-risk properties in New Zealand, because information about sea level rise wasnt always put on a propertys Land Information Memorandum (LIM) report. While councils were required to include that information on a LIM, many councils were still trying to assess the risk, Iorns said. Fierce competition for both rentals and homes for sale nationwide, had led to exorbitant prices, which also meant people particularly the young couldnt always be picky if a home they could afford was in a risky area. But some people chose to buy or stay in at-risk seaside homes, because they didnt foresee a threat in their lifetime, or didnt want to leave because they were happy there, Iorns said. Councils - which saw themselves as having a duty to reduce risk to life - could choose to build sea walls, she said. But councils would become liable to maintain the walls, and liable to any damage from them. If a council forced people to leave their homes through advanced retreat, questions remained about whether those people would be compensated to previous high market values. Councils had been sued in the past when they tried to make changes, like putting sea level rise on LIM reports, Iorns said. A review of the Resource Management Act this month was expected to make things easier for councils, with a recommendation for separate adaptation and managed retreat legislation, and a fund for managed retreat. The new law would cover whether tax- and ratepayers picked up the full tab for managed retreat or part of the costs. Some houses in New Zealand had already lost insurance due to sea level rise, and their values had plummeted, she said. Chief executive of the Insurance Council, Tim Grafton, said people needed to start thinking long term about buying properties in high risk areas. Insurers used council maps and other public information, to work out a propertys flood risk, but they could also now buy LiDAR products, which used laser light to measure distances like a property's height relative to sea level, Grafton said. In the not too distant future, maps of flooding and losses would be just as available to banks as they were to insurers, he cautioned. Banks will not be loaning 30-year mortgages. Theyll be shortening their terms if they see theres a good chance their insurance may not be in place. If banks reduce their terms to 10 or 15 years .... the cost of taking out the loan is going to rise sharply. If someone then wanted to re-sell a house within a few years of taking on such a loan, far fewer people would want to buy it because the loan term would be even shorter, Grafton said. You start to lose the value of the house, but you still owe the bank money. He said people needed to look at the probability of sea level rise occurring, and consider the options to reduce the risk. There is no doubt that if you live in a flood plain and youre subject ot frequent extreme weather events that are only going to get more extreme, and more frequent, then youve got a problem ... that you need to sit down and constructively solve. Conversations could range from whether to set new regulations around floor levels, or look at ways of reducing river flooding. But retreat would certainly apply in some areas, he said. Managed retreat is a last resort option where it doesnt make economic sense any more to have properties located there. Solutions about how to manage that need to be found by central as well as local government.