In the Outer Banks, A Growing Number of Homes Are Getting Swallowed by the Sea

As more homes collapse into the sea, local governments and homeowners are at a crossroads.

The Outer Banks of North Carolina attracts more than 5 million visitors annually who prize this 200-mile stretch of islands as a Southern beach paradise. 

But as storms pound coastlines and sea levels rise, the pristine ocean and sprawling beaches that drew so many people to this tourist hotspot could now undermine it. 

Earlier today, at least four homes collapsed on the shores of Buxton on Hatteras Island in Dare County, succumbing to rough tides as strong winds and stormy weather bring choppy seas to this part of the U.S. East Coast, according to the National Park Service. Since mid-September, at least 15 homes have collapsed on Hatteras Island. Officials from the Cape Hatteras National Seashore said on Monday that during the ongoing hazardous weather, dozens of threatened oceanfront structures “may break apart or collapse, releasing hazardous debris into the water and onto Seashore beaches.” 

These structures were all compromised by strong tides, erosion and storm surge intensified by multiple recent offshore storms. It’s not a new problem for the Outer Banks or other areas along the U.S. East Coast, though data suggests it is happening more often. 

With hundreds more coastal North Carolina houses at risk, homeowners and the county must reckon with dwindling options for combating the issue.

Swallowed by the Sea: As waves crash gently during low tide along the Buxton coastline of Hatteras Island, homes on the beach teeter precariously on wooden stilts. The structures show the scars of a near-constant battle against the sea; entire chunks are missing from wooden siding, windows are shattered and wires no longer attached to anything poke out from the sand. On one property, an air conditioner condenser unit swayed in the wind, connected to the home only by a few wires—stubbornly holding on like a loose tooth about to dislodge. 

Though seas were relatively calm last Thursday afternoon when my colleague Charles Paullin stopped by Buxton, it’s clear the rough tides brought by recent storms and offshore hurricanes—Erin, Humberto and Imelda—have taken their toll. 

Drayton Blount, 34, of Virginia Beach, was staying further north in the Outer Banks in Kill Devil Hills last week. He stopped by the homes in Buxton that were bulldozed by the ocean.

“For something like this to happen, it’s always tough,” Blount said. “It’s all part of living on the sandbar. It’s always shifting. Things are always changing.” 

Just five days later, the ocean claimed another home lining this stretch of beach. In the past five-and-a-half years, at least 23 privately owned houses have collapsed on the beaches of the Cape Hatteras National Seashore, 18 of those during 2024 and 2025. Blount is correct that this is a natural side effect of living on barrier islands, which are essentially highly mobile deposits of sand that move in response to dynamic weather and shifting seas. More frequent home collapses have occurred in the region since the early 2000s following a boom in housing development, and critical roads are often washed out or rendered unusable during storms. 

“These are not natural disasters. These are human disasters,” geologist Stan Riggs, who studied the coastline of this area for decades at East Carolina University, told me. “We knew 150 years ago how fast that shoreline is changing, and you do not want to put a house down there on the … leading edge of this energy system.” 

Research suggests that the risk is growing with climate change as warming ocean temperatures supercharge storms in the Atlantic Ocean, increasing the number of major hurricanes threatening the East Coast each year. 

This extreme weather can erode the sands that these houses rely on for their foundation, and more frequent rain events and storm surges leave little time for the beaches and dunes that protect homes to recover. In North Carolina, climate change has pushed up sea levels by about half a foot since 2000, William Sweet, an oceanographer with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, told The New York Times. 

Local governments are scrambling to combat erosion through multi-million-dollar beach nourishment projects, which involve adding sand manually to specific areas to extend the beach. But this process is only a short-term fix, according to Bobby Outten, Dare County’s manager and attorney. He said houses have been collapsing since he first moved to the area around four decades ago, but he recognizes that beaches are shrinking rapidly along the coast.

In Buxton, “the erosion rate there has increased, or is faster than what we had anticipated,” he told me. “I do know that our [beach nourishment] project hasn’t lasted as long as we anticipated, hence having to do the project again next year.”

In 2024, a group of federal, state and local officials—including Outten—released a report on managing threatened oceanfront structures, which found that 750 of nearly 8,800 oceanfront structures in North Carolina are at risk of oceanfront erosion. The majority of homes swallowed by the sea in the Outer Banks are secondary residences or vacation rentals. 

The report acknowledges that the issue “will inevitably worsen considering sea level rise forecasts,” but does not mention climate change at all in its 20 pages. This omission reflects the climate debates that emerge in the region each time a home collapses, as AFP reported on in September. 

Despite the growing body of research about the connection between climate change and erosion in the Outer Banks, Outten said that the county hasn’t waded into that discourse because “you get off message, because so many people have so many different points of view,” he said. 

“We’ve got to figure out how to solve these problems in a way that’s economical and efficient, to preserve our infrastructure, to preserve our economy and to protect the public,” Outten added, “and so that’s what our role in this is.”

However, Riggs believes that climate change threatens the entire Outer Banks coastline. 

“It’s all about climate change,” he said. “It’s the climate that drives the storms, and the storms keep coming and [the] sea level is rising.” 

A Climate Paradox: Intense storms can rapidly reverse the progress of beach nourishment projects and sandbag barriers often stand little chance against major storm surge. Many of the homes at risk are also deemed unsuitable for use due to the damage they’ve already sustained, but the county does not have the legal authority to condemn them.

That leaves the local government and the people who own at-risk homes with just a few options, each with downsides. 

People can dismantle their homes or relocate them, which is costly and comes with little government support. Or they can wait until the property is swallowed by the sea and claim the insurance money. That option may be better financially for the owners, but it poses environmental, economic and safety issues across the region when debris breaks off into the water and on the beach. 

While the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s National Flood Insurance Program does not cover the costs of relocating buildings, it does cover a large portion of the expenses associated with collapse for covered homes. The state and federal governments are exploring options for buyout programs to offer an alternative. In 2023, the National Park Service purchased two homes in the Rodanthe community of Dare County for more than $700,000 to tear down and convert to public beaches. However, this program didn’t have the funds to continue, despite further interest, The New York Times reports. 

In 2024, U.S. Rep. Greg Murphy (R-N.C.) introduced legislation to create a funding mechanism for relocating or removing structures, but it has stalled in the House. This means homeowners will likely get more money by waiting for a collapse than by using existing programs, according to Outton. 

“Property owners aren’t willing to sell for less than what they collect from their insurance if they allow it to fall in,” he said. “And local governments aren’t willing to buy for more than the fair market value, which is often less than the insurance coverage. And so you have some incentives that don’t line up there, and makes that difficult.” 

To avoid repeating the mistakes of the past when building new houses, Riggs said we need to “learn how to live with the coast,” instead of increasing construction on vulnerable lands. 

“The ocean does not negotiate,” he said. “And that’s what we have to remember.”

Cover photo:  Homes in the Outer Banks of North Carolina face rising risks from erosion and sea level rise. Credit: Charles Paullin/Inside Climate News