Up here on LI, Sound or ocean front land's quite expensive and homes are often in the millions. There is most definitely an allure to sit on your back porch with the water as a backdrop. I would say people that can afford them will be well insured and can probably afford to lose them and rebuild or buy another house. The Hamptons come to mind as the smaller houses out there routinely wash into the sea when a hurricane hits. It would irk me to know that the gov't pays for them to be rebuilt, if that's the case.
I once considered buying a condo on Long Beach, LI, right on the ocean. It would have been wonderful to walk out to the boardwalk there and the sea air. The building looked fairly sturdy, but it was just too close to the beach for comfort and it was only a few stories high. Mother nature can be brutal, as we're seeing.
Speaking of that, a rescue vessel was sent to the Keys. They apparently really took a hit. It was cat 4 when it came in there. Heard last night on Fox that each category is 25x the destructive power of the prior one. Ouch.
| 
