Shoring Up the Market: Realtors and Scientists Team Up on Coastal Resilience [Podcast]

Brian Yurasits: [00:00:00] Within the last year or two years, you're seeing insurance change, you know, with the Gulf of Maine changing faster than most bodies of water, with the, you know, sea levels rising. What do you think is the greatest challenge that kind of we're faced with? 

Talia Sperduto: We saw like houses on Nantucket in the last year, there was one I think that sold, it was like purchased for 4 million and then it was sold for 600,000 and then 200,000. 

And it's like that is the reality that is coming for us all along the seacoast. And people are so funny because until they're literally like, right on the precipice, until their house is sinking into the water, they seem to have a lot of tolerance. And even first time buyers, like I think you're the, the educated, you're in this world, so you feel it so tactfully but 

Brian Yurasits: I'm just scared. 

Talia Sperduto: No, a lot of people don't listen to me when I'm like, this is risky. [00:01:00] They're like, we don't care. We love it. It's great neighborhood. I'm like, okay, I can only, I can give you the risks. But I think that, um, I worry for the people that are very focused on what it has been like, and I do think they'll, uh, there will come a time when a ton of properties at once will not be viable to live in.

That's happening more and more in pockets that we don't necessarily hear about. I think trying to educate people like one person at at a time, so to speak when they're buying, is so critical because those are the people that will steward these waterfront properties in the coming years. And so if we're at least doing our best to educate them on what they can do to help stop the problems and then also at least like be ready. Then maybe they can set up side funds for X, Y, and Z repairs that they're going to do down the [00:02:00] line.

Brian Yurasits: Imagine standing on the edge of New Hampshire's coastline, a place where the land meets the sea, where beauty and vulnerability coexist. Here, the tides shape, not just the shorelines, but also the lives and the livelihoods of those who call this place home. In recent years, the challenges facing our coastal communities have become more pronounced. 

Rising sea levels, increased storm intensity and frequent flooding are no longer distant threats. They're realities impacting property values, infrastructure, and the very fabric of our seaside towns. Recognizing the need for proactive measures, an innovative collaboration has emerged between real estate professionals and [00:03:00] scientists.

This partnership aims to bridge the gap between market dynamics and environmental resilience. One such initiative as the Living with Water Workshop, organized by the New Hampshire Coastal Adaptation Work Group, also known as NHCAW. This program equips realtors with the knowledge and resources to navigate the complexities of coastal hazards,

offering tools to guide clients in making informed decisions about buying and living near water. Today, on time and Tide, we explore this unique intersection between real estate and environmental science. We'll hear from those at the forefront of this effort, discussing how they're working together to bolster coastal resilience, protect property investments, and foster communities that can withstand the ebb and flow of changing tides.

Stay with us as we delve into how these collaborations are shoring up the market and safeguarding our coastal future. In our first act, I take a trip to Great Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve to meet with Lynn [00:04:00] Vaccaro and Lisa Wise, who describe how living with water came to be, why realtors and their clients should care about flood risks, and we will share some home buying stories of our own.

Thank you Lisa and Lynn for taking the time to join our podcast today. The topic we'll be covering with you fits perfectly into our podcast title of time and Tide. You both work with New Hampshire Coastal Adaptation work group and today we'll be wading into the topic of coastal flooding, sea level rise, and home ownership.

I will also say we're in a beautiful room here, recording at the Great Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve. I've been here a few times on my own to kayak and fish and check out the horseshoe crabs in the summertime. Lynn, let's start with you.

Lynn Vaccaro: Yeah, so I, I, I do work here at the Great Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve.

My role is the training and engagement [00:05:00] coordinator here, um, which means I do a lot of different things, but try to get science into the hands of people who can use it. 

Lisa Wise: So I'm Lisa Wise and I work with New Hampshire Sea Grant and UNH Cooperative Extension as the Coastal Resilience Specialist. So a similar kind of role to Lynn. 

Brian Yurasits: What would you say is probably the most likely way that any community member has engaged with NHCAW in their everyday lives. 

Lisa Wise: We have representatives amongst the NHCAW membership from municipalities, oftentimes municipal staff like planners are members or um, municipal volunteer board members have joined NHCAW.

We also have a newsletter and some social media presence. 

Brian Yurasits: I was gonna say, I heard about it through the Picturing Rising Tides Initiative, which engages local photographers to visualize some of the extreme high tides and their impacts on the coast. Uh, I actually personally submitted a few photos to this initiative, uh, and I, and I heard about it through Instagram.

Which I think is a good [00:06:00] transition into what we're gonna be talking about on today's episode, which is real estate. The housing market is a very hot topic right now in the state of New Hampshire and around the US as a whole. People are reading about insurance companies dropping their coverage for high risk homes as natural disasters become more intense and frequent, and for anyone who lives on the seacoast of New Hampshire, flooding has become a very visual reminder that the ocean is slowly creeping upwards.

We're here to talk about this workshop that you have that's called Living With Water. It's designed to train realtors, correct. So I would love to hear, um, how you all came about this idea for a workshop called Living with Water.  

Lynn Vaccaro: A lot of these ideas, you, you really need relationships to do it, and you need to have there be kind of a spark and a need, um, that's kind of timely to really get kind of interest in something. 

And so we, I got a call about, I don't know, maybe a year and a half ago now from this woman, Jane James, who just was like, hey, you know, I happen to be the realtor who, [00:07:00] who like did the land transaction that gave you the Great Bay Discovery Center. And she's like, I wanna bring a group of my, you know, real estate peers, um, and do just a field trip. 

I just wanna get people out there. I want them to know about the estuary. I want my, you know, my team to just be able to better sort of tell the story about the estuary when we're selling houses and tell them about the coast. Anyways, so they came. I was like, Hey, you know, by the way, if anybody here. Wants to partner with me. 

I've had this idea for a little while now of doing some, you know, some collaborative sort of workshop development, training development for other folks like yourself around, you know, wetlands and flooding and, um, and so as part of that, I, I got to meet this woman, Talia, and she was like, Hey, I wanna do it.

Let's, let's figure out how we can do it.

Lisa Wise: This kind of realtor programming is really a, a way to get at more of the individual resident decision making and making sure that there are resources and connections to facilitate resilient decisions about where people live, work, and play here in coastal New Hampshire.

Uh, and also having navigated the, the process of buying a home in [00:08:00] recent years and even having some awareness of, of flooding related information. It still can be really overwhelming and hard to navigate. 

Brian Yurasits: I think of the image that you have on the Living With Water webpage and it's super impactful.

It's, it's literally a sign that says Land for Sale by Owner, and it's halfway underwater. And to me just coming onto the page and seeing that, like that tells a story in itself. But I'm, I'm curious if this is something that they've been thinking about for a while now, if it's really only coming up in recent history.

Lynn Vaccaro: So I think kind of, I think every realtor might answer that, that question a little bit differently. And the other thing that kind of happened, I think that aligned and brought interest to it, um, to this topic, is that New Hampshire did pass sort of a new disclosure rule around having to disclose, you know, some flood risks at the time of, of purchase.

Um, not unlike, you know, what they do around lead and asbestos and radon. So that really like, realtors were just like, ooh, whoa, what is this? How do I meet this renew requirement? So that was helpful [00:09:00] I think in terms of driving interest.

Lisa Wise: The websites where you would look for homes have started to add more information about flooding.

And so I think realtors are probably getting more questions from clients. I think there's some survey information that shows that buyers are increasingly interested in the climate risks that they, they'll be facing. And if you think about a 30 year mortgage, even if you're, if you're not gonna stay there for 30 years, uh, you have a, a likelihood of, of encountering some sort of climate risk, whether it's flooding or extreme heat, drought. 

Brian Yurasits: I will say that personally hits home for me because my fiance and I are looking, I get texts almost daily from her and my mom, uh, with just different Zillow listings. That's something that I see and I look for.

I wanna get into like the meat and potatoes of, of this workshop. What will any real estate agent who participates in this workshop come away with, that they can translate to buyers and sellers. 

Lisa Wise: Something that really stuck with me from engaging with this audience is that they wanna [00:10:00] be the source of the source.

Maybe they don't need to know all of the details, but they need to know enough and understand enough of the context to connect their clients to the information that's helpful. The kind of key areas that we talked about were coastal habitats and natural resources, the associated protections and regulations that are involved. Uh, we talked about a flood risk and what's the kind of regulatory requirements, so the FEMA flood maps, and that's a whole lot to digest and interpret. And then looking ahead, what information do we have about future flood risk that could be helpful to keep in mind as well. 

Lynn Vaccaro: You know, you may look at the landscape and you're like, oh, it's wet there. It's dry there. That's the way it's gonna be every day for the rest of my time that I own this house. And just sort of really conveying the message that like these systems are incredibly dynamic. You know, the tides go up and down nine, 10 feet every single day. So just that alone is gonna be different um, you know, depending on the next time you come and look at this house. Um, but then all of these wetlands, all these creeks, all these streams, they're all [00:11:00] changing and growing and shrinking. Depending on what the climate is doing, that's only getting more extreme. So just really kind of conveying that I feel like was just important and that some of these systems are, are regulated for a reason. These habitats are, are protected with rules and regulations, and those are, those are for, you know, to protect the ecological services of those wetlands. But they're also to protect you as a, as a homeowner, 

Brian Yurasits: going through the Living with water webpage that you have.

This is one of the first things that popped out to me. It was that over 40% of national flood insurance program claims are from outside high risk zones. So I didn't know that. Personally, like being a, a potential home buyer, and I don't think that a lot of people in New Hampshire might even think of that. 

Lisa Wise: One of the key messages is that where it can rain, it can flood, anyone can, you know, has some flood risk, even if it's relatively low. You know, there's different sources of flooding, whether it's the ocean, big rain events which are getting more extreme or even like a storm drain is clogged with leaves and causes flooding.

If you have a federally backed mortgage, there is a [00:12:00] requirement to purchase flood insurance, uh, if you are in what's considered these high risk zones or the special flood hazard area. However, anyone can purchase flood insurance, and I think there's also a gap in awareness. I certainly didn't know at the time when I was buying a house, but, um, typical homeowners insurance does not cover flood impacts. 

It's not just the clients who are gonna be moving right near the ocean that have to be thinking about flooding. It's, it's all of us.  

Brian Yurasits: You don't have to be a hydrologist, right? Like, that's part, part of the workshop is that you get pointed into the right, to the right resources to help you figure this stuff out.

Lisa Wise: Some of the realtors expressed this experience of, you know, their client might not know they are required to get flood insurance until the 11th hour. Like they're about to close and they find out there's this requirement, and so they really wanna be prepared to navigate those conversations. 

Brian Yurasits: Yeah, I think it might be worse finding out that you're in a high risk flood area than finding out that you have really bad neighbors at the 11th hour.

Personally, I [00:13:00] think at least for the long term. Do you think that a more educated, uh, realtor and home buyer will lead to, uh, more support for lasting coastal adaptation here in New Hampshire? 

Lisa Wise: That's the goal, right? You know, we had a fantastic group of over 25 realtors at the first workshop and hoping to do more of them.

And, and hoping that the impacts will kind of trickle out. 

Brian Yurasits: Do you talk about living shorelines and, and coastal restoration? Is that, is that a tool that realtors can kind of share with home buyers and sellers just as something that can, can give them a buffer from things like flooding? 

Lynn Vaccaro: Yeah, we did talk about that a little bit. 

I mean, we, you know, we only had three hours, so we couldn't cover everything, but we did, I mean, there was like a, a specific case study that we shared of um, you know, kind of transforming your yard to create a little bit of this natural buffer and letting the grass grow up and maybe adding some boulders to remind you not to mow so close to the water.

And, um, that did stick with people. I mean, it was one of the things that we saw in the evaluation forms that they're like, oh, that example was great. I'd be happy to kind of use that and [00:14:00] share that. 'cause there is for some of these adaptation strategies, we need like a cultural change. We need people's aesthetics to change.

And you kind of need to hear that from all different places, you know, from the place where you buy your plants to the, your realtor, to your friends and neighbors. And so I, I like that we could kind of empower these realtors to kind of have some of those ecological messages that they feel comfortable sharing. 

Lisa Wise: Yeah. We also shared. Some cautionary tales, which I think also resonated with people like a homeowner who maybe implemented something without a permit. You know, not knowing the permitting process and then having to pay to kind of undo that. A lot of what the workshop focused on is informing the, the decision about purchasing a home in the first place.

But people do wanna know kind of as part of that. Like what after I potentially purchase this home and I'm living here, what are my options and what, what do I need to be aware of? And we also, I wanted to mention that we were hosted for the workshop at Strawberry Bank Museum in Portsmouth. And Rodney Roland gave us a wonderful [00:15:00] tour of their living with water exhibit. The talks all about how, especially that area of Portsmouth has changed, uh, in terms of water levels and they're having to make some adaptations of the buildings, particularly the basements, to deal with increased flooding and higher water levels. And, and especially with the salty water, you know, that kind of wreaks havoc on basement construction materials, especially older buildings.

And so that was something I that was not top of mind for me buying a home was basement, uh, flooding. And it has become more top of mind. 

Brian Yurasits: Yeah. And if you're the medium home price now is like half a million dollars. If you're spending that much money on something, you better, you better be very sure of what's going to happen there way into the future. 

And you're really just shoring up your own investment. And I'm curious just if either of you have personal stories from your own, like home buying experience that you'd want to share that's related to any of [00:16:00] this.  

Lisa Wise: So we bought our house in Elliot, Maine in 2017. At the time, there was a box about, you know, does the house, is there flooding? 

And it said they had checked off, don't know. Then when we moved in, it was obvious that we are already dealing with some, some basement flooding issues. And so again, it, it, that just really hit home for me that, you know, even if you do have this disclosure requirement or a disclosure, you know, a box, a checkbox on one form, it's easy to miss or it's easy for that to not be really useful information. 

So that was, uh, definitely a reality check for me. 

Lynn Vaccaro: My husband and I bought a home here in the seacoast recently. Um, and it was a big, a big deal. Um, and we got very, very close with our realtor. And so I was really struck by kind of how intimate that relationship was, which is partly what kind of led me to wanna work with realtors more just realizing that they have these very intimate relationships with a lot of different people and so they could kind of be sort of an entry point to a, a broader audience. Um, and then just like how much I trusted what a realtor told me, you know? Um, and even cases where, [00:17:00] it's interesting 'cause my husband and I both kind of work in this field. My husband's got some hydrology training I have a little bit too.

Um, and you know, we looked at a home in Exeter that was, you know, in the floodplain, but apparently had a letter of map revision stating that the house itself was not in danger and so therefore didn't need flood insurance. And there was a septic system there that was really in the buffer. And, but it was complicated to try to evaluate the risks even given that we had some, some, some knowledge that we brought to that.

Again, your realtor kind of is a source of the source and kind of points you to some good places, but it's really, it's up to you, right? As the buyer. They bring much to this kind of conversation around climate adaptation that I think it's, it, it's just super cool to kind of add to their, their knowledge base that includes already so many diverse things, HVAC systems and, you know, driveway maintenance.

And, you know, now they can also kind of talk about, um, flood risks in a more informed way. 

Brian Yurasits: I do wanna say, uh, thank you both Lisa and Lynn for taking the time and chatting with us about living with water. 

Lisa Wise: Thanks, Brian. Yeah, thanks Lynn.

Lynn Vaccaro: This was really fun. Yeah. Thank you [00:18:00] for asking the good questions. 

Brian Yurasits: In our second act, my co-host Erik Chapman, joins me for a conversation with Talia Sperduto, the local realtor who helped bring living with water to life. 

Talia also shares her personal journey from sustainable fashion design to helping to address coastal resilience through the home buying experience. Don't drift away.

Talia Sperduto: I studied environmental science in college. 

Brian Yurasits: How'd you land at realty? Just fate?

Talia Sperduto: My best friend's mother in college, she was a realtor and she told all of us in our friend group that the best thing we could do was buy a house before paying off loans. Before you do anything else, buy a house. 

Erik Chapman: Yeah, 

Talia Sperduto: and interest rates were really low, so my boyfriend and I at the time 

Erik Chapman: you did it, 

Talia Sperduto: bought a house.

Brian Yurasits: I'm so jealous 

Talia Sperduto: When it was so, so cheap. And then we renovated it and I tried to do it in a historic and environmental way. And then [00:19:00] through that process I was like, oh, this is really interesting. Yeah. Um, I'll get my real estate license.

Erik Chapman: Do you have to be able to tolerate stress? 

Talia Sperduto: I would say most of the job is managing other people's stress, keeping things moving smoothly.

Mm-hmm. In a time when everyone is very naturally anxious. 

Erik Chapman: Yeah. My wife and I were looking at a place in Kittery Kittery Point. We kind of liked it and we were sort of into it and interested, but like kind of nervous. And during the second visit, these three massive dogs from the neighbor just came back and they were just barking the whole time.

The seller's agent was just like, 

Talia Sperduto: I have had this like moral conundrum with like using my degree, but not fully because selling real estate is like, it's a need to an extent. I feel like I do serve a purpose, but I also sometimes, like both my parents were biologists, and they did incredible work. I look at what their legacies are and I'm like, you [00:20:00] saved whole forests and like I'm selling houses.

And so I felt like I really, because I do have time flexibility with this job, I needed to make sure that I was fulfilling all of my moral obligations for what I wanna do and make an impact in, in the Seacoast. When I first got my license, I was doing all my normal realtor stuff, but I was also learning about like what nonprofits and things I wanted to be involved with.

Yeah. And I met this woman named Barbara, who was on the Conservation Commission, and she learned that I was a realtor and said, by the way, we have all these issues in Portsmouth all the time with people buying houses within FEMA, flood zones and not knowing, but then also just not having any grasp of how to steward a property that's on the water.

Brian Yurasits: Before you got involved with Lynn and Lisa, like how often did flooding come up in conversations from buyers and sellers? 

Talia Sperduto: We have increasingly had insurance issues, I'd say in the last year. In my [00:21:00] first two years, it wasn't a big conversation, buyers not being able to attain insurance. In the last year, not unfortunately, not so much through education, but more through trial and error, you see people in the marketplace having issues with insurance. But it's all connected to flooding. Usually it's something to do with, roofs are a big problem right now due to like extreme weather events, and then also attaining flood insurance when maybe you didn't used to have to have it. But now the maps have changed and all of a sudden you do.

Brian Yurasits: Were you thinking about it more after having gone through the workshop?  

Talia Sperduto: It's definitely been on my mind. Always in Portsmouth and in waterfront properties. Just from my background in environmental science, whenever I was looking at a property with buyers, I would say like as a realtor, it's not my obligation to teach you about environmental science, but you should be checking in on these things, and you probably shouldn't just be looking at the FEMA [00:22:00] maps.

Like you should be using your own judgment to understand that we're in a place that may be dangerous for you to invest all of your assets. Now, I would say I've really fine tuned and changed some of the ways I'm writing contracts, especially purchase and sales agreements, and especially in places that aren't on the water. 

So I had a, this wasn't my transaction, but one of my friends had a client who went under contract on a house. And so for those of you who don't know what that terminology under contract means, it's means that you have a purchase and sales agreement that's fully executed by a buyer and a seller, but it has different terms and due diligence within it that have to be checked off before the sale goes through.

There's a section on the purchase and sales agreement, it's called Due Diligence, and you can write in their how much time you need to check for the viability of flood insurance, regular insurance. And so this person I know, my colleague, I think that they had actually put 10 [00:23:00] days down for due diligence, which is not that common.

Often on contracts you'll see people like waive due diligence in a competitive market, or even put like two days, three days, which is not necessarily enough time for a buyer to go and research to see if they can get insurance. They talked to the lender and the insurance broker. They were like, oh, your insurance is gonna be through the roof.

This won't be $2,000 a year. This is gonna be like seven or eight. And so they were able to back out, they got their deposit back because they had that timeframe to do that research. 

Erik Chapman: Can, can I ask a question? You mentioned that things have really accelerated in a number of ways in the past year. Is it the maps changed or you know, what has happened in the past year to kind of make some of these changes?

Talia Sperduto: So the maps have changed to an extent, but mostly it's that we have severe weather events happening across the world and the United States, especially like in Florida and on the west coast with the fires, [00:24:00] and then also with flood events. And I think in New England, people are in this mindset of, oh, well we're not experiencing that here so we can get insurance. 

Insurance companies are operating like investors. And so all of those impacts there, they have to be leveraged out here. And so they're not going to be willing to take a risk on a property that they might have been able to take a risk on last year because now they have so much debt somewhere else. 

Erik Chapman: So it's a product of just growing awareness from the industry, 

Talia Sperduto: the literal ability and viability of insurance. 

Has changed very rapidly due to the natural disasters that are happening other places. And it's not so much that like we all of a sudden are seeing these extreme floods here. I mean we, two years ago we had a Vermont. Yeah, yeah. We are seeing it. Yeah. But it's not even, it's not necessarily the things that are happening here, it's just that like we can't go back now.

Yeah. Like the [00:25:00] companies that are providing us insurance do not have enough money to make a coverage in a lot of the houses that they used to. 

Erik Chapman: The situation has changed. We're not going back Where's this going, do you think? 

Talia Sperduto: Well, I think if you're a person who is highly risk averse and you're willing to gamble more, then you might think, okay, if my house floods, am I going to be able to pay a hundred thousand dollars to remedy this? Or do I want to take the steps upfront to make this house ready for a storm that I know is coming? Um, and do I want to factor that into the offer that I make? Or do I want to not buy that property and based on looking at those things during, you know, my due diligence period when I make an offer.

Maybe I decide not to buy that house. 

Brian Yurasits: Depending on where you're at in your home buying journey, you're gonna be thinking about flooding and risk in different ways. So, uh, I know here on the Seacoast, [00:26:00] my, my partner and I were looking to become first time home buyers, so I'm going to be very risk averse and I'm curious if you could talk a little bit about what a first time home buyer should be looking for and if this workshop helped you communicate with these first time home buyers who are of a younger generation, maybe they have a, a better literacy, uh, they're more aware of, of these, you know, changes that are happening globally and, and here in New England. But it also makes me think of, I'm getting priced out of a lot of, uh, homes that we're looking at just, by folks that are, you know, willing to pay cash or just really move super quickly. Are you finding that those folks are more prevalent here in the Seacoast region? Are they less risk averse than first time home buyers?  

Talia Sperduto: I think that a lot of the folks who maybe had a condo in Boston back Bay, and they just sold it for $3 million and now they're coming to Portsmouth, they, for whatever [00:27:00] reason, don't seem concerned that there was a lot of flooding in the south end, in the basement of this house that they're about to buy and they are buying it no matter what. First time home buyers I do find tend to be more open to hearing education as far as flooding goes, and that's not to say that everyone is like that, that's in that group, but I see it play out that way. 

I just helped someone go under contract on a house. And the conversation that I had with this person last week was okay, right now, if we're looking at the FEMA maps, you're well outside the danger zone that they've set, but some of the houses on the surrounding streets and one of the roads that abuts his property looks like in some scenarios, it will have flooding within the next 20 to 50 years. And so our conversation there was, okay, right [00:28:00] now you can get flood insurance, but you might not be able to get flood insurance in the future if you don't get it now. If any amount of your property is in a flood zone, even if it's not your house, you might not be able to get flood insurance at all, at that point. Having those conversations of putting the question to the buyer and asking them what their tolerance for risk is, that's what I'm trying to do because it's their decision. 

Erik Chapman: You're supporting potential buyers, um, in their, the, the need for them to understand the relationship between the property and the natural world, and then prepare for stewardship of that. So I guess I'm starting to see that the intersection between your interests and your job, which is really cool. You know, I mean, it makes it, you're an advocate not just for the buyer, but for the relationship between the buyer and, and the landscape.

Brian Yurasits: And, and to that point too, uh, you know, a lot of people take their environmental, you know, science degree or marine science degree and, you know, think I'm gonna be, you know, I'm gonna have this impact by working [00:29:00] out on the Isles of shoals studying, you know, marine mammals out there. But in reality a lot of clean water work and stewardship of our coastline happens or can happen at your home. Whether it's talking about septic tanks, whether it's talking about how you can or cannot develop, uh, these spaces. If you can plant native, uh, you know, support native habitat in your backyard. Was there like a learning moment in that workshop that you know, 'cause you have a background in this, is there something that that really stuck out to you as new or that you hadn't known previously? 

Talia Sperduto: What I have been really excited about is the fact that now you can go on to the website for our course and there's various different packets of information for realtors and then also buyers or sellers to navigate through, much of which is information and guidance on how to make your home more resilient. And so some of those things I think that I've been excited about and have been able to incorporate, like into closing [00:30:00] gifts for buyers, I'll give them like a little packet about like what I think they could do and a timeline on it. But some of those are like just creating rain barrel systems.

Or considering not cutting down certain trees that even the city or the town or neighbors are like, you need to cut these down. It might actually be better to trim them and not take up this, this huge life source that's like siphoning a lot of the water out of your basement.

Brian Yurasits: You know, when, when people's money are on the line, like this is a, an incredible way to reach people where they are, like they're dealing with these problems head on.

In their own life in a really big way. 

Talia Sperduto: If you're able to show them that by taking these steps that aren't necessarily going to cost so much, you might be able to decrease the flooding in your garage where you want to tinker with your boat or whatever, and you're helping this natural resource that you're obviously moving towards because you think it's beautiful. 

So I do think that I can [00:31:00] connect the dots for people. 

Erik Chapman: As you kinda spend more time. In this line of work, you're gonna be stacking up all these, these kind of success stories, and I think you're gonna, you'll probably end up with, uh, the kind of impact that even rivals your parents and what they did with, uh, biology hopefully, and conservation.

Um, so that's really cool, but in a very different way.

Brian Yurasits: I personally can tell you why I love it here, but I'm, I'm curious if you could talk a little bit about the trends of people moving up here, trying to buy homes here. I know it's a very hot housing market in, in New Hampshire. How are they connecting with our natural ecosystems here, whether it's the coast or the mountains?

Um, I'm curious if you can share like. Some of like the demand for housing here and, and how it connects people with, you know, New England's beautiful natural seascapes and landscapes. 

Talia Sperduto: Here in Portsmouth or the seacoast we're an hour from some of the most beautiful mountains in the Northeast and we can ski.

We're also an hour from Boston [00:32:00] where you can work, and then you're an hour from Portland, which has one of the best food scenes in the Northeast. I think also specific to like the New Hampshire and Maine Seacoast, we have this incredibly beautiful historic housing stock that is very different from what people experience in a lot of other areas. 

Brian Yurasits: Just speaking about like even some differences between Portland and Portsmouth, you know, Portland has this like incredible working waterfront that's preserved and puts an, an emphasis on the importance of like the local fishing and aquaculture industries for the culture there. How are you seeing New Hampshire's housing stock change? 

I know that there's really, like, from what I understand and importance on, uh, maintaining the historic and and cultural aspects of a lot of these houses, but where are you seeing that, you know, maybe development is happening or that new, new markets are opening up. Um, and what do those look like on our coast up here?

Talia Sperduto: There's constant [00:33:00] like headbutting between the people that want things to stay exactly the same. Maybe they don't want a single family home to be turned into a two family, and they don't want solar panels on that house. But yet at the same time, I don't think that they want to see continuous urban sprawl heading out into all of our wetlands and forests.

But we also do have people that are moving here and we have young people that are trying to start families and they can't necessarily, afford something that's in the south end of Portsmouth, unless it is a duplex or maybe a three unit. We are just coming to this point of convergence where we need to figure out what will allow for more development, but also maintenance of all of that cultural character that people really love. And I think it's possible. I think it's very possible, but I think that people have to give and take and be more open to listening to each [00:34:00] other. 

Erik Chapman: A really important topic on the Seacoast, which we may not touch in on this episode, but just affordable housing. Mm-hmm.

Absolutely. You know, how, how who can live here and if the future is determined by, you know, who can afford to live here? You know, what does that mean for New Hampshire? So, I mean, if that's, you know, in the mix, it's complicated. 

Talia Sperduto: Well, if we're not creating those potentially smaller spaces that are still affordable, right within the hearts of our cities and towns, then we're destroying the capability for people that are artists and teachers and like scientists and all the people that provide this great infrastructure that we love.

They, they're not gonna be able to live here. And we see that. All the time. So not to bring the mood down, but we do need to, to find a way to remedy that. And something that I'm a big proponent of, which is not, it's easier said than done, but we have a lot of houses [00:35:00] in our cities and towns in New Hampshire and Maine that are run down or vacant or not used for their highest and best purpose. And when we can redeveloping those in place, rather than just continuing to sprawl outwards, provides more housing that could potentially be lower cost, smaller and closer to the amenities that people need to, to walk to rather than drive to. 

Brian Yurasits: What, what we've been talking about, about affordable housing ties back to the conversation of flooding and insurance.

Because if insurance costs go up, it makes it more difficult, right. And I'm gonna come back to the fact that I'm looking to become a first time home buyer. I mean, these are all things that like we, we are kind of on the cusp of, you know, being able to afford where we work, right? And any little thing could trigger us to change our minds or, or make a different decision when we're looking to buy a home. 

So I, I do think that it all ties together in terms of affordability. And, and I'm curious, just tying it back [00:36:00] to the workshop, if you could speak a bit a bit about how helpful, um, it was to connect with people like Lisa and Lynn, um, you know, with the Great Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve and, and New Hampshire Sea Grant. 

Like what's the potential for it to help? Shape the way that realtors kind of operate here on the Seacoast.  

Talia Sperduto: Our first class that we had, we had, let's, I wanna say like around 30 or 40 people come to the class and this one, everyone was like, they were thrilled. They wanted to be there. All the information that they were learning was either new to them or like really building upon critical questions that they have right now. This class is, like this is like the best class that has come to the Seacoast Board of Realtors in 10 years. That was one of the quotes that we had gotten from our feedback. To connect with people that are really knowledgeable and actually have data to speak upon is like it will allow them when they're, even though they're going to continue to be the source of the [00:37:00] source for their clients, they in a moment that's stressful or in a moment where an offer is being made, it'll be like a consideration on the table, whereas before it maybe wasn't even thought of.  

Brian Yurasits: Anything that you want to kind of shout from the rooftop for potential home buyers or sellers, uh, about like why they should care about, 

 Erik Chapman: You should have a rooftop for this. 

Brian Yurasits: For them to shout off? 

Erik Chapman: Yeah. At some point in the interview at the end, just like, have a rooftop bring 'em out there.  

Talia Sperduto: Lisa and Lynn are amazing. I felt like I've relearned a lot from them. And one of my friends, Kaylee, she, I refer a lot of, um, folks to her for insurance.

She works for Portsmouth Atlantic Insurance and she sponsored this class and was a part of it at some points and she and I both just kept saying, wow, these ladies are so inspirational to us, we're like, this is something to look up to. Um, they're just really doing so much incredible work for their community.

Brian Yurasits: Yeah, I mean, this, this is like the definition of supporting [00:38:00] sustainable development, right? Like figuring out how we're gonna house more people in, in an area that, people are coming here because they wanna directly connect with nature and like the mountains, the ocean, Great Bay. I really appreciate you sharing those stories with us, Talia. 

And it's, it can be an inspiration for other people listening out there that you know, no matter what field you work in, like you can be thinking about environmental issues and how you can integrate that into your work and make a difference kind of every day.

I have a few additional shout outs before we tie a bow on this podcast today. Living With Water was supported by Annie Cox and Abigail Lyon at Piscataqua River Estuaries Partnership, and Jennifer Gilbert from the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services Coastal Program. Support for the workshop came from Portsmouth Atlantic Insurance, Seacoast board of Realtors, Whole Heart Homes and Samonas [00:39:00] Realty. 

So Eric, that was a fascinating conversation with Talia and the whole team behind living with water. I'm curious, if you had unlimited funds here on the Seacoast and could buy free range to buy any home, uh, where would your dream home be and what would it look like?  

Erik Chapman: Does it have to be on the seacoast, can it be 

Brian Yurasits: It can be anywhere. 

Erik Chapman: Okay. So I think for me it would be on a lake in the mountains and it would probably be, you know, renovating a cabin or a camp. I mean, this is my dream. Just be able to kind of hang out, have people there, swim, boat, canoe, fish, and hike, and then more swimming and more canoeing. 

And I think I would be sitting there looking at the water and thinking about my stewardship of that resource. Just looking at it, it's looking at me. I'm looking at it. I'm, I'm taking care of it, but it's going to the ocean and I want to do my part to, to have it kind of be, uh, taken care of. 

Brian Yurasits: And I think your dream home example brings up an important point that [00:40:00] everyone in the state of New Hampshire is connected to our ocean in one way or another. 

The lakes, the rivers, as, as the saying goes, it all flows and connects to the ocean. Everything flows downstream. So. And I, I will say personally, I need to be like 10 minutes from the ocean. Yeah. If I could bike, I know. Yeah. Strap my surfboard to, to a little carrier on the side of my bike and just take a bike down there, especially right during the summertime. 

Yeah. That's, that's really all I need. A little cottage by the beach would be nice. 

Erik Chapman: Yeah, that sounds nice. Um, can I come over? 

Brian Yurasits: Yeah, you're always welcome. You're always invited, Erik. 

Erik Chapman: Your dream when you live in your dream home and I live in mine. Yeah, exactly. We'll have access passes to each other's places, so yeah. 

And we'll have some friends on the river. Yes, the lake, the river, and the ocean.  

Brian Yurasits: Cover all of our bases. Oh, I love it. Sounds like a plan, Erik, well, thank you everyone for listening to this episode of Time and Tide.