Kid Rock's Oceanfront Home Hangs In The Balance As Erosion Threatens Coastal Properties

Oceanfront homes on both coasts are in jeopardy of tumbling into the sea as erosion sucks the land out from under them.

Kid Rock and Conair heiress Babe Rizzuto are among those whose homes in Jupiter Inlet Colony, Florida, lost land to the Atlantic Ocean.

Rizzuto listed her home at 14 Ocean Drive for $22.5 million in November. The daughter of the late billionaire founder of Conair purchased the house for $6.3 million in 2015. Rizzuto's 5,900-square-foot house and pool were not damaged, but part of the backyard, some fencing and palm trees were washed away.

"It doesn't help the sales effort, that's for sure," listing agent Andrew Russo of the Russo Group at Illustrated Properties told The Real Deal.

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Kid Rock, whose legal name is Robert Ritchie, bought his home at 11 Ocean Drive for $3.2 million in 2012. He lost his stairway to the beach and part of his back deck to erosion.

Across the country in Orange County, California, the cliff beneath three multimillion estates on Scenic Drive in Dana Point is washed out from under them during back-to-back rainstorms. None of the homes have been evacuated or found to be too dangerous to live in.

But more wet weather is in the forecast and could further damage the slope, which civil engineer Steve Viani told the Los Angeles Times could "give way at any time."

More than $1 trillion worth of property is within 700 feet of a coastline, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

Coastal erosion accounts for about $500 million per year in property loss in the United States, according to the U.S. Climate Resilience Toolkit. The federal government spends an average of $150 million per year on beach nourishment and other shoreline erosion control measures.

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In the past, protecting the coast meant "hardening" the shoreline with structures like seawalls, groins and levees. But many states have shifted toward nonstructural stabilization techniques such as beach nourishment — placing additional sand on a beach to serve as a buffer against erosion.

"Sea level rise will cause an increase in coastal erosion, and the human response will be critical," according to the U.S. Climate Resilience Toolkit. "If we choose to build hard structures in an attempt to keep the shoreline position stable, we will lose beach area due to scour. If we let the shoreline migrate naturally, we can expect to see erosion rates increase, especially in regions of the coast that are already dealing with starved sediment budgets and rapid shoreline migration. Increases in storm frequency and intensity in the future will also cause increased coastal erosion."

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