As far as I’m concerned the tradeoffs are minor compared to the benefits…especially in the Fall and Spring when nobody is around.
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Should I be worried about offshore wind turbines? I hate wind turbines on land.
You probably should.
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Bummer. Those of you who love the view from the porch, would it change if your landscape is embedded with wind turbines?
The broken pieces are huge and/or numerous. It’s insane. What do we expect down the road, in 10-20 years, when they are all worn out and we have to trash them? What landfill can take them? Same for the solar panels. They are both massive. At some point, they will have to be trashed. Massive amount of trash. How’s that environmentally friendly? Looks like another plastic recycling fiasco.
Many years ago a friend looked at beachside homes on the Ca coast. She passed due to not wanting to look at the oil platforms. This was 35 years ago and if she had bought the house she would have made a lot of money.
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She probably would have also made a lot of money, if she chose against the beachside home, but remained in the same southern CA area. It’s not only the beach homes in southern CA that have had large increases in value over the past 35 years.
For example, my first home in the southern CA area was a basic, ~1000 sqft condo that was located a short walk from where I worked. The condo was also located just under a mile from beach. The home was built 35+ years ago, but the oldest sale I could find was in 2000 for $160k. Today it is valued at $850k, so that’s an annualized gain of 7.2% year over past 24 years. Most larger sized homes in my current neighborhood have had a similar annualized gain of ~7%/year over this period. ~7%/year seems to be the norm.
Looking up a comparable looking basic condo on the beach. Home sales in 2000 were ~$700k. Today units sell for ~$2.3 million. That’s an annualized gain of 5.1% year over 24 years. Also note that the condo complex is on the beach, but does not have access to the beach due to a steep cliff. If it had access to beach, I expect prices would be substantially higher than $2.3M for 1000 sqft condo.
In this example, the beach condo had a much smaller annualized price gain than the condo 1 mile from the beach, as well as home in my current neighborhood. The beach condo also has a much higher monthly HOA than my old condo, which likely relates to the increased maintenance costs. That extra mile closer to the beach also quadrupled the price in 2000 and tripled the price in 2024, so mortgage expense would be much higher. Looking from a purely financial perspective, the beach condo lags well behind other alternatives. However, I realize people who buy beach homes typically do not do so primarily for financial reasons.
In addition to @Data10 analysis, would it have appreciated as much if the oil rig came after she bought the house? It looks like a wind farm is being proposed where I am looking.
I don’t know. The amount of homes on the coast is limited so while I think the rigs turned off some others didn’t care. Is the cost lower in the area where the wind farms will be located?
@Data10 they bought in a different area still on the coast. They got increased value but not as much as the oil rig area.
I checked some other beach homes in my area, and the pattern listed in my earlier post was consistent. Almost without exception beach homes had substantially lower increase in value over past 25 years than comparable houses a small distance inland. Typical for beach homes was 3-4%/year. Typical for comparable inland homes was 6-7%/year.
One possible contributing factor is higher price of beach homes than comparable inland homes, pricing a larger portion of buyers out of the market. Eventually this price gets so high that hardly any potential buyers can afford the home. My earlier post mentioned a 1000 sqft condo without beach access was $2.3M. Single family homes with a backyard are much higher. Median price was $6 to $7 million or so. Some exceeded $10M. Comparable homes slightly inland were closer to $2M. The number of potential buyers for a $2M home is far larger than a >$6M home. However, this doesn’t fully explain the difference. If I look at inland homes that are valued $6M to $10M, without exception they have all increased in value much faster than the beachside homes over past 25 years.
Another possible contributing factor is that this particular beach isn’t as pleasant as it was 25 years ago, leading to buyers willing to pay a smaller % premium for being near beach. During the time I’ve lived in the area, the beach has become more crowded with increasingly nightmarish street parking, the rock to sand ratio on beach has become much higher, erosion reducing sqft of backyard with collapsing bluff incidents, increased pollution, increased number of short-term rentals with people making noise and partying, and increased insurance challenges. I expect it’s a very different experience from the beach 25 years ago. To test this theory, I also looked at what I consider to be one of the nicest beaches in my area, yet is also far less crowded than the beach mentioned above due to more limited public access, and has few renters due to regulations. Beachside small condos that are currently valued near $2M in this area had an annualized return of 6-7%, similar to inland homes.
This touches on with what iglooo mentions about the future wind farm. A large portion of the value likely relates to beach view and general beach experience. If something in the future makes this beach experience less pleasant, such as a new wind farm, it may result in a steep appreciation hit compared to comparable inland homes.
I honestly have very mixed feelings about the possibility of wind turbines being built but the view is not really one of them. The current proposal has them being built 10+ miles off the shore and given the curvature of the earth I don’t really worry about them disrupting the view. Other things - the impact on fishing, running wires underground through sensitive waterfront areas, worry me more
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Some people are saying that the curvature of earth is a hoax and that windmills kill birds. To avoid any possible confusion, that was a joke.
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With power generation, pick your poison. They all have pros and cons. Since coal is being phased out and nuclear isn’t being built in the US, we need to find other options.
I understand that NIMBY is very strong but someone has to be near a source of power generation.
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Of course, you are right. Those environmental issues are bigger concerns. BTW, 10 miles is not far enough. It may be if the object is flat on the ground and viewed lying on the ground. The structure is huge, many thousands feet tall. And we are not watching with eyes planted on the ground. It sounds like visibility is more limited by the weather than the earth curvature. In New England, there are not that many clear days with 20-30 mile visibility. In NJ, the weather must be better so is the visibility. Wind far 30 miles away would be visible. And picking broken turbine pieces on the beach more frequent than seashells…
I am amazed how big these things are. This looks more like an environmental disaster than saving the environment. Wind and solar need so much space that sooner or later they will need to cover the entire earth surface to produce enough energy.
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Actually, they are reviving nuclear. Trying to reopen Three mile, and there seems to be new nuclear technology that’s smaller and safer. It will still take time.
It doesn’t have to be in anybody’s backyard. They could create an industrial zone in an already spoiled environment and group these facilities together. That way they can limit expansions into fresh area and continuing the ruin. They should have enough buffer between an industrial zone and the rest so that it will be in nobody’s backyard. We don’t have to fight; in your backyard, no in YOUR backyard, etc. The trouble with wind and solar is they need to go into and spoil fresh areas. They need so much space. Apparently, they can’t limit their expansion to rooftops and parking lots. That must be a drop in the bucket. I am in a desert area. Solar farms expansion on the desert is rapid and vast. And the ruin that’d inevitably follow. There must be a better way.
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Looking for an ocean front home? This just went on the market - with a front page story in the paper today.
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Sounds like there are at least 17 toilets? No thanks, no way I’m scrubbing that many! 
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I’d rather look at wind farms than container ships.
My instinct has been to be anti-nuclear since I was in Munich when Chernobyl exploded and it set off the geiger counters in the lab where my husband worked 500 miles away! My kids who have done a lot more research on the subject than I have (through college courses and outside reading) have convinced me that at the moment it’s the option that does the least harm with the most efficiency. But we really need better options.
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Much I dislike container ships, they are a lot smaller than a wind turbine. There should be a better way than solar or wind taking up so much space. I can’t see how it won’t pose issues down the road yet to be discovered.
I remember Chernobyl. I had best green beans in an Italian restaurant near the Alps the previous year. Went back to the same restaurant just for that in Chernobyl year. The owner said they now only served canned vegetables. Chernobyl reactors were outdated even then. It’s nothing like that these days. I won’t elaborate. I am sure one can find detailed info easily if interested.
WOW! What a showplace. And if you take a mortgage, it shows payment would be only $500K/month (plus $24k/month property tax).
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I’m retired and live on Nantucket for half of the year. The Vineyard Wind turbines are about 15 miles from Nantucket. This is apparently the largest windfarm on the east coast. You can definitely see the turbines from the South Shore beaches, but IMHO it doesn’t make the Nantucket beaches any less beautiful.
My issue with the windfarm is the company that installed and maintains them. This company (Vineyard Wind) has problems with the turbines. Debris from a malfunctioning wind turbine washed up on shore (it happened near the end of July) and it closed down the beaches at the height of the summer season for a number of days. A federal agency is investing the incident (BSEE). I don’t think any of the turbines are operating right now. This company needs to get its act together.
I heard this story on a local (Boston) NPR station and thought it raised an interesting issue about the possible effects of the turbines on the North Atlantic Right Whales.
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