A gorgeous Nantucket summer home once worth nearly $2 million has sold for just $200,000. And the owners couldn’t be happier.
Jane Carlin and Ben Gifford, who bought their dream home on the west side of Nantucket in 1988, have been forced to sell their beloved house for a fraction of its value as Mother Nature threatens to reclaim it.
The 1,700-square-foot (1,57-square-meter) home, which was valued at a whopping $1.9 million in 2024, now sits perilously close to the Atlantic Ocean after years of persistent erosion have eroded the shoreline.
“It’s almost ready to go in,” Jane told the Nantucket Current. “It’s been really brutal. It used to be a neighborhood and you knew who lived where. And now, when you drive there, there’s not much to see.”
But the couple received an unexpected offer on their home on Sheep Pond Rd. from their neighbor, Don Vaccaro, a businessman who owns the property next door.
A stunning Nantucket summer home once worth nearly $2 million has sold for just $200,000 — and the owners couldn’t be happier
Vaccaro bought the threatened house for a mere $200,000.
“All winter I’ve been trying frantically to see if any of the organizations would take the house and move it, and if we would help with the moving costs,” Jane said. “I didn’t want it to fall into the ocean or be demolished. But I had no luck at all.”
“We said, ‘Wow! We’re not going to say no,’” Carlin added.
“You don’t want to sell to someone knowing that a storm could wipe it out next week,” Carlin said when asked why they didn’t put the house on the market. “We wanted to be ethical and honest about it. Then this miracle fell out of the sky and we sold it to him for nothing.”
“It was so emotional when we left the house for the last time the other day,” she added. “But we’re also just lucky. I don’t feel sorry for myself at all. Given the dire housing situation on Nantucket, we’re just grateful for the time we had there.”
Vaccaro, who rents his adjacent property for up to $13,000 a week, is well aware of the fate of his new acquisition.
Jane Carlin and Ben Gifford, who bought their dream vacation home on the west side of Nantucket in 1988, have been forced to sell their beloved property for a fraction of its value as Mother Nature threatens to reclaim it
The couple received an unexpected offer on their home at 28 Sheep Pond Rd from their neighbor, Don Vaccaro (pictured), a businessman who owns the property next door
A photo released by the Nantucket Natural Resources Department shows properties perched precariously on eroded cliffs
“The house is not going to last more than six months, basically,” Vaccaro said. “The ocean is going to win, inevitably. The house is temporary, everything in life is temporary.”
“Because we own 26 Sheep Pond Road, there are a number of creative things we can do to extend the life of the house. And even if the house is destroyed, we may still have additional land,” he said.
“We also plan to implement a number of erosion control strategies that will likely extend the time until the house is habitable. The easiest is planting seagrass, which should be done in a few weeks. The second is a V-shaped, low (less than 1 foot) biodegradable silt fence, which has proven successful to some extent in a few other areas.”
According to alarming predictions, the idyllic island of Nantucket, a paradise for the rich and famous, could be completely wiped off the map by the end of the century.
A group of Nantucket homeowners recently lost a battle to preserve a self-funded “shield” they created to protect homes from the sea. Pictured: A flooded home on the island
This summer hotspot, known for its pristine beaches and picturesque cobblestone streets, is facing an existential threat as rising sea levels threaten to inundate large parts of the island.
According to data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA guideline), Much of the island could be under water by 2100.
Nantucket is expected to experience 14 inches (35 centimeters) of sea level rise by 2040, 28 inches (70 centimeters) by 2060, 51 inches (131 centimeters) by 2080, and 6.6 feet (2 meters) by 2100.
These predictions may only be the tip of the iceberg, as they do not take into account other factors such as devastating storms, powerful waves and further erosion.