'Come hell or high water': America's elite are snapping up multimillion-dollar homes in Nantucket — even though properties are sinking into the ocean at a stunning rate

"When it comes to rising sea levels, the trade-off for the amenities, location and often views, people are willing to take on the mitigation that needs to be done," Mckechnie said. This could mean doing some home improvement work, like adding storm panels, or building at a higher level.

There are expensive — and complicated — solutions

Some Nantucket homeowners are shelling out a small fortune to move their homes away from the coast, while others, like Sternlicht, are faced with no other option than to raze them down entirely.

Sternlicht originally planned to relocate his Cisco Beach home until Hurricanes Paulette and Teddy left him with no more space to move the property.

And one group of homeowners on Baxter Road embarked on a controversial project, installing “geotubes” — massive, cylindrical bags of sand designed to control erosion — along 900 feet of the shoreline, according to The New York Times.

The idea was conceived after a storm in 2013, and has cost residents an estimated $10 million to maintain over the years.

"It's not inexpensive, but it is worth doing," Baxter Road resident and housing developer Joshua Posner told the Times. "It's like another tax bill."

However, local groups have been fighting back and forth over the years over the long-term viability of the geotubes, which at one point were scheduled to be removed. The Conservation Commission, a regulatory board responsible for protecting wetland resource areas, has argued that engineered structures, including geotubes, can disrupt a beach’s natural behaviors and cause erosion to increase elsewhere, according to the Times.