Flying dirt, rising oceans and real estate

Just finished reading The Worst Hard Time, Timothy Egan’s award-winning chronicle of the Dust Bowl, and couldn’t help noticing the real estate angle. worst hard time.gif

To summarize in three sentences: Uncle Sam kicks the Comanches off the High Plains and invites in farmers. Strong demand for wheat lures speculators (sort of like day traders in 1999 and real estate flippers in 2004) who plow under millions of acres of grasslands. Wheat market collapses, drought kills crops and the denuded earth takes flight.

Long after the Dust Bowl ended, Plains real estate remains a tough sell. Some burgs in Kansas, Nebraska and Wyoming are so desperate for residents they’re offering free lots to people who move in. Check out KansasFreeLand.com for examples.

And while we’re on the topic of environmental disasters that affect real estate prices, Business 2.0 offers this report on how entrepreneurs are girding for rising sea levels. Floating houses and underwater condos, anyone?