Buy a Lighthouse

Diamond Shoals Light Station aka Texas Tower, off Cape Hatteras, North Carolina


Bidding for this oil drilling station augmented with a lighthouse will start this spring. One wonders what potential buyers would want to use it for. Might they convert it into an oceanic summer McMansion with an amazing 360ยบ ocean view (that is, if they're lucky enough to get financing), the vanguard of an incoming sea-level-rise real estate speculative bubble?

We actually don't mind this sort of irrational housing fad, if it means seeing beachfront McMansions get razed to the ground and rebuilt offshore as part of a managed retreat program while at the same time curtailing further coastal development. If it means halting the billions of tax revenues annually earmarked to protect these properties of the very few, money which can be used in ways that can benefit the very many, then by all means speculate away.


A Little Columbarium in the Atlantic


Real Estate of the Future