Potential Destruction From Dorian Spreads to 1.5 Million Homes

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Jan 6, 2:51AM EST · Published Sep 2, 7:13AM EDT

Potential Destruction From Dorian Spreads to 1.5 Million Homes — © Joe Raedle / Getty Images

When Hurricane Dorian was supposed to come ashore in the middle of the Atlantic Coast of Florida, hundreds of thousands of homes were at risk for significant damage. That estimate has tripled as it appears the storm will hit the U.S. further up the coast.

Real estate research firm CoreLogic forecast as many as 668,000 homes in Florida might have to be rebuilt. The projection was based on a Category 3 storm hitting someplace between Daytona Beach and Vero Beach, Florida. Dorian is now a Category 5 storm and it is forecast to make landfall as far north as North Carolina.

The storm’s turn North mean as many as another 996,000 homes may need to be rebuilt in South Carolina and North Carolina. The total cost of what CoreLogic terms reconstruction cost value (RCV) for the replacement of these homes would be as high as $230 billion. This means the cost would be nearly twice as high as the destruction of Hurricane Katrina, the most expensive storm in U.S. history.

CoreLogic’s estimates are lower depending on the strength of the storm, and its researchers have given a range of home destruction and rebuilding costs based on this:

North Carolina:
Cat 1: There are 42,272 homes with a combined (RCV) of $10.02B
Cat 2: 157,819 homes with a combined RCV of $32.34B
Cat 3: 363,075 homes with a combined RCV of $84.29B
Cat 4: 517,807 homes with a combined RCV of $120.49B
Cat 5: 600,377 homes with a combined RCV of $140.96B

South Carolina:
Cat 1: There are 42,791 homes with a combined (RCV) of $11.55B
Cat 2: 143,239 homes with a combined RCV of $37.20B
Cat 3: 236,772 homes with a combined RCV of $59.03B
Cat 4: 332,854 homes with a combined RCV of $79.87B
Cat 5: 396,589 homes with a combined RCV of $92.94B

[nativounit]

When combined with the Florida figure, it means over 1.5 million homes face catastrophic destruction.

The figures are based on storm surge damage. They also assume 100% destruction of homes under what CoreLogic calls a “worst-case scenario” With Dorian racing toward the Atlantic Coast as a Category 5 storm, the figures are not out of the question.

For a picture of where Dorian may fall among the most powerful hurricanes of all time, 24/7 Wall St. has done an analysis of the top 70.

[recirclink id=573059]

[wallst_email_signup]

Follow 24/7 Wall St. on Google

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.