Just gonna put this here, mostly because I’m too disgusted* to write anything coherent:

«The [National] Park Service purchased 23298 E. Beacon Rd. for $471,000, as the 1,920-square-foot house still had a working septic system and was livable. The purchase price for 23292 E. Beacon Rd. — a 1,568 square foot, four-bedroom house that had lost its septic tank and been deemed unsafe for habitation — was $260,000.

“There was an opportunity to get out, and I thought I should take it,” said Daniel Kerlakian, 36, of Cincinnati, who bought 23298 E. Beacon Rd. for $380,000 two summers ago, both as a rental investment but also a place to vacation with his wife and three young sons in a area they had grown to love.

…

“Why continue the stress? Why continue this battle with the ocean?” said Kerlakian, who said he basically broke even, but walked away with a mixture of relief and sadness.

Next door, Erick Saks received $100,000 less than his family paid in 2021 for 23292 E. Beacon Rd., when he and his wife bought the vacation home they christened “Mermaid’s Kiss.” A retired Air Force lieutenant colonel, Saks and his wife had gotten married in the Outer Banks, and he had cherished memories of past trips there.»

https://wapo.st/3KruTtH (gift)

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*Wait, I’m not quite too disgusted. The stupidity of people to buy a house on the beach recently in the Outer Banks, no matter what the real estate agents told them. The necessity of the US taxpayer to bail them out because otherwise hazardous trash goes washing down the shore for miles. (Boards with nails, broken glass, glass wool, septic waste, whatever else I can’t think of, ….)