Stunning beach-side Nantucket home sells for just $600,000, down from its original list price of $2.3m – can you guess the catch?

A beachfront home on the wealthy island of Nantucket has sold for just $600,000 – a huge discount from its original sale price of $2.3 million.

The average home price on the exclusive Massachusetts island off Cape Cod is $4.43 million, but there’s a big catch with the newly sold home on Sheep Pond Road, with coastal erosion a real concern.

There is a very real possibility that the entire estate will be eaten by the ocean within a few years.

It led to the home’s former owner deciding to lower the price tag for a quick sale, having only purchased it for $1.65 million in 2021.

Last summer the house was rented for $15,000 a week, but over the winter storm after storm slowly ate away at the property’s backyard with 100 feet of dunes that had been between the house and the Atlantic Ocean washed away by the waves. and reduced to only 30 feet.

Brendan Maddigan, director of property investment company JLL, has bought the new home and is well aware of the risks, but believes there is still potential.

“It’s a gamble, but I’ve been comfortable with the risk,” Maddigan told the BBC Nantucket Stream.

There are limited options to increase the chances, as the house is already right against the eastern border of the plot and there is no room to move it further from the ever-advancing coastline.

“It’s a losing battle and I have no confidence that the erosion will ultimately – or maybe not – destroy that house. I looked at it as if I would be happy if I could have that place for a few years, hopefully a little longer, and do whatever I could to make it last. Climate change is very real. I’m hopeful, but I’m realistic.’

Maddigan, 42, is already familiar with the area that has grown in Woods Hole, Massachusetts on Cape Cod.

Brendan Maddigan, director of property investment company JLL, has bought the new home and is well aware of the risks, but believes there is still potential.

‘The house is great. The location is great. And the price does a good job of mitigating the risk,” Maddigan told the newspaper Boston sphere. “I’d like to think it’s going to be around for a while, but I was definitely aware of the risk of a particular storm causing a problem in the future.”

‘The property has a number of advantages, but I don’t have a crystal ball and who knows what nature will do. We know what the trends are. There are years without erosion and other years when erosion is significant. “I plan to do my best to hold on to this place as long as possible… But there is nothing you can do to stop erosion,” he said.

Maddigan was the first buyer to purchase the home with an all-cash offer within hours of the price drop.

“I jumped at the chance and I hope it lasts long enough for my children to have fond memories of it,” Maddigan said. “And who knows, maybe we’ll get lucky.”

“The floodgates opened, I’m not kidding,” real estate agent Susan Shepherd of Shepherd Real Estate told The Current.

‘People called me from all over the country. Not only have I personally fielded as many as 30 to 40 calls a day, but other real estate agents have also called me and said they were getting swamped. I expected it, but not that it would be a full-time job. I’ve only done field visits.’

The people who inquired ranged from first-time homebuyers to those eager to gamble $600,000 on a home that may not have been around for very long.

“Some people said, ‘Oh, this isn’t that bad,’ and others said, ‘Holy crap,’” Shepherd explained.

‘It was fascinating. There’s so much of the human element and psyche that comes into play here. I knew there would be immediate interest, I just didn’t know the magnitude.

‘There was the full range: a first-time homebuyer on the other side – the pension writer who wanted to get away from it all. The full range. Somebody said, “Oh, I’ll put my chef there. I’ll put my boat captain there.” To some, it was just ‘Vegas money.’

Shepherd also emphasized that the price drop to $600,000, aside from the erosion, also reflected the seller’s motivation to vacate the property.

“I said, ‘If we want to sell this in hours and not days, where should we price it?’ Shepherd said. ‘Was there any money left on the table? That could be so. But when I talk to people about the price of a property, timing is always a factor. The seller wanted to turn the page, and that had more to do with it than anything else.”