Long Beach Homes Sustain Significant Damage Following Tropical Storm Rachel, and 8 Buildings Have Been Red-Tagged

California beachfront properties are on the verge of ruin after four days of destructive waves from Tropical Storm Rachel.

Inspectors have red-tagged eight buildings on the Long Beach Peninsula so far, affecting 13 individual addresses, and one building has been yellow-tagged.

The number of tagged buildings could still increase as inspections continue, although crews have limited time to access damaged areas in between high tides.

Crews had a small window of time between Sunday night’s high tide and the tide that came in around 10 a.m. Monday. There will be another window for further inspection before Monday night’s high tide.

As relentless waves damaged the exterior of many buildings throughout the weekend, smashing doors and windows, another issue took shape: Each wave washed away sand from beneath the buildings, potentially causing foundations to shift.

One home had a large crack stretching from its foundation to its roof, with the front half of the building appearing to have shifted, according to KABC.

“As the waves are hitting these structures, it's pulling the soil away from the foundations and the substructures of these buildings, potentially undermining the foundations of these buildings,” Dan Fox, president of the Structural Engineers Association of Southern California, told KABC.

A mandatory evacuation, which began Friday at 7 p.m., remains in place for homes on Seaside Walk between 64th and 66th places. The order is expected to remain in place through at least Tuesday at noon, according to local officials.

A commercial crane positioned 30 heavy-duty sandbags weighing 3,000 pounds each to create a barrier ahead of the storm, but waves topped the bulkhead and sent both water and sand into homes and streets.

The Los Angeles Harbor tide gauge peaked at 7.7 feet on Saturday morning, exceeding the predicted tide by about 1.6 feet, according to the National Weather Service.

“The projected high tides of around 8 feet for Sunday morning would approach or exceed recent record tide levels for L.A. County,” it said.

The city plans to bring 50,000 to 100,000 cubic yards of sand to Long Beach next week to strengthen coastal defenses in vulnerable areas, Newsweek reported.

Long Beach officials estimate $1.5 million to $3.5 million will be needed to repair damages. The money will come through a public trust fund called the Tidelands Emergency Reserves, according to Newsweek.

The emergency fund differs from the general fund and the regular city emergency reserves. It is used for “operations, maintenance, development, and capital projects along the city’s coastal and waterfront areas," the city said.

Long Beach is a warm seller’s market, according to Realtor.com® data. The median listing price is $725,000, while the median sold price is well above at $860,000. The median days on the market for the area is 54, just below the national median of 61.

The market in parts of Long Beach could see a swift change following the storm.

The damage from Tropical Storm Rachel is devastating, but it’s relatively isolated to the ocean side of the Long Beach Peninsula, according to local real estate agent Juan Huizar of Sage Real Estate Group.

While severe weather and natural disasters have previously not been much of a conversation with buyers looking to settle on the coast, he knows that more buyers will now ask about weather risks following this major disaster.

“I can’t imagine a buyer right now saying, ‘take me to the Peninsula.’ That’s going to be a very hard sell,” Huizar tells Realtor.com. “It just happened, so we have no data yet. But I cannot imagine that any of those homes on the water are going to be desirable right now, just from an insurance perspective.”

Huizar maintains that the majority of the city of Long Beach will continue to move at a normal pace, while homes values on the Peninsula may struggle for a couple of years.

“I would say that the impact on real estate will be isolated to the Peninsula, and where many people may have had that on their interest list, that is going to drop,” he says. “And like we’ve seen with other disasters, after a few years, people will forget and the values will come back up. But for now, they’re going to be sluggish.”

Realtor.com reached out to the Long Beach mayor and city manager for comments but did not receive responses at the time of publication.