COLUMN: As oil gushes, our home values dive

After more than 25 years of visiting the beaches of Walton County, my wife and I moved here nine years ago from Nashville. For those of us who can reflect back, we have watched our beach community grow up and take on big city status without most of the hassles of the big city.

During the off season, we have all the luxuries of a big city without the headaches of big city traffic. On one of our vacations to Destin in the late 1980s, we remember venturing out and driving east on Hwy. 30A and discovering pristine white sand beaches dotted here and there with vacationers. We asked ourselves how in the world had so few people not discovered this paradise?

Since we have lived here, we have seen the development of Baytowne Wharf, Destin Commons, Grand Boulevard, Pier Park and HarborWalk Village. We’ve seen the development of dozens of new restaurants mixed in with the old standards all of us love such as Café 30-A, Bud & Alley’s and The Red Bar.

Each time my we visit a big city, we look at each other and realize what a wonderful life we have in Walton County.

During the summer for three months out of the year, we have to share our paradise with tourists who are drawn to our pristine white sand beaches and our casual way of life. For the remainder of the year, we can zip to and from locations along 30A without traffic. We can walk into our favorite restaurants without a wait to enjoy our local seafood.

With the BP oil spill, most of us are wondering if our way of life may have been changed forever. So far for the most part, our beaches have been spared.

However, birds have died. Turtles have died. Fish have died and about three months into the spill, what we do not know is the long-term effects on the ecological balances in the Gulf of Mexico. Business owners have lost income. Charter fishing captains are out of business.

Real estate owners, who make their living renting their houses and condos, have lost income. One thing that we have not read anything about is the disastrous effect this spill has had on real estate values along the Gulf Coast. As if we had not already suffered enough, we have all witnessed the real estate boom and bust. And now we are experiencing another bust in real estate values.
We are registered users of the website Zillow.com. This site tracks and records real estate values throughout the country by recording recent sales.

Prior to the BP oil spill with the real estate bust, we all have heard horror stories about foreclosures and real estate values dropping by as much as 60 percent and 70 percent.

About 30 days after the BP oil spill, my wife and I were shocked to receive an email from Zillow.com informing us that the value of our house had declined 15 percent over the previous thirty days or $87,500. And then just a few days ago we received another email from Zillow.com informing us that the value of our house had dropped by another 10.6 percent or another $53,000.

So since the BP oil spill, our property has depreciated in value by a total of $140,500. This depreciation in value has to solely be attributed to the BP oil spill. Multiply this by thousands of homeowners throughout the Gulf Coast and the depreciation in property values has to be in the untold billions of dollars.

It was just reported Thursday by RealtyTrack that more than 1 million American households are likely to lose their homes to foreclosure this year, as lenders work their way through a huge backlog of borrowers who have fallen behind on their loans. Foreclosures will persist and home prices will be very weak well into 2012, concludes Celia Chen, senior director of Moody's Economy.com.

And of course the state of Florida was in the top five states with the highest foreclosure rates. When you add these statistics to the BP oil spill, real estate values in the Gulf Coast have been decimated. For those of us who have been lucky enough to stay in our homes and avoid foreclosure, we need significant tax breaks in the form of reduced property taxes.

I am sure the last thing Rhonda Skipper, the Walton County Tax Collector, wants to do is to reduce property taxes across the board given the fact property values have been in a downward death spiral the last several years, but it needs to be done.

Is our paradise lost forever?

So I end by asking the following question: Why has this story not been covered by the news media and what is our recourse?

Ted & Jeanne Melcher are Santa Rosa Beach residents.