If the price is still affordable, of course, the answer is yet. American’s coastal resource is not getting more bountiful, but shrinking day by day. Most coastal counties now have devised strict land protection bills to save millions of acres of coastal/wetland from further exploitation by humans. That means that Bayfront and ocean front sources is shrinking very fast. This situation will ensure your future appreciation from these properties. On the other hand, baby boomer’s wave of retirement is only starting, it will not peak until 10-15 years later. So, lots of appreciation to look forward to.

However, the tough part is how to hold on to them when you have to pay the mortgage. My strategy is enagaging in “Vacation rental business”. At the same time, putting down enough to offset the extra burden. This won’t be easy. Not every landlord wants to do this. But in order to secure a limited resource before it’s too late 5-10 years later, maybe this is a sensible thing to do.

About California coastal regions. You need to find if these regions have big long beaches so millions of vacationers will go. You have to rent out to them to offset your cost. Santa Cruz maybe good. However, I am not sure if you can afford though. Santa Cruz’ price may be already at a level that we on the east coast will look forward to in 10 years.

In Northern CA, just like in Bay area, you have a huge huge BARRIER of entry (high cost). If you can make the cash flow equation, investing in beach town is 100% sure winning strategy. Why? 75 million baby boomers are making sure that will happen.

The true lesson is this

Don’t over invest in beach properties because they may be great appreciating during good time, but renting them out is much harder than in metro district like Northern VA where they came from. See, they sold their big city house and dump all the money into hard-to-rent-out coastal regions like NC’s outer banks and FL’s Daytona beach. That’s a misplacement for their investment. In reality, they thought only to flip them, but now forced to hold them against their wills.

That’s the key lesson.

If they move back to North VA, and split their money into several SFHs or townhomes, they should have no problem finding tenants to stop their blood bleed.

A seemingly small details, but devils are all in details, that got them into trouble.