Life On A Sandbar

The cottage condo next to mine just sold for $529,000! It was on the market all year, but it seems that  $1 million-plus “cottages” are really flying off the shelves.

There are two separate trends that have caught my eye. The first was a $2.9 million new “cottage” (more on the price later). I didn’t even have to look for it—it was a monster! Built entirely of glass, it sits between two traditional story-and-a-half cottages featuring cedar shingles and white trim (anywhere else, it would simply be considered a “home”). The third floor is entirely glass—I mean, floor-to-ceiling glass walls! It’s very striking; you can see people sitting around inside, probably entertaining guests over cocktails.

From what I heard, they tore down the old cedar-shingle house and built that monster in its place. The neighbors are none too pleased, as the three-story building blocks their view of Cape Cod Bay. The town never needed height limits before, but now people are coming in and building these massive structures.

Another monster was built on a sand cliff in the Cape Cod National Seashore (CCNS). Now, both the town and the CCNS have strict building restrictions. The new owner tore down the old cottage and wanted to build a $5 million home overlooking the bay and Provincetown—a beautiful location! The town and the CCNS said no, as it violated the building restrictions tied to the property. I believe the CCNS argument was that it was built too close to the edge of a 100-foot cliff and would inevitably tumble into the sea.

The owner took them to court and won! A few years later, sure enough, the house was right on the edge of the cliff, poised to slide into the sea. They wanted to put in erosion controls, but the town and the CCNS said no, arguing that the controls would disrupt the natural movement of sand along the coast and cause problems in other areas. So, what did they do? They did what many wealthy people do: They sued and won!

Then, the owners sold it for over $5 million! In less than a year, the new owners found their $5,000,000 little cottage literally on the brink of the cliff. So now they are suing—no, get this—the bank for giving them the $5,000,000 loan, claiming the lender must have been crazy to approve it!

The second trend is the result of a “K-shaped” economy. Million-dollar-plus cottages are selling like hotcakes, but properties like my neighbor’s don’t sell easily. Millionaires are snapping up the monster cottages, while smaller cottages like mine—with only 600 square feet—are considered dogs. They are completely pricing out middle-income buyers.

One immediate result of my neighbor’s sale is that the tax assessors are going to look at it as the new baseline, meaning the assessed value of my cottage just went up. Higher taxes for me!

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This isn’t new. My brother lived in Maine and was a real estate agent. What we saw there were family farms being sold off just to pay the taxes. People had no choice with their land; the farms simply weren’t making enough money to cover the skyrocketing taxes. You can’t blame them for selling either—when someone waves a couple of million dollars in your face, you take the money and run!

Maine was looking into ways to save family farms, one of which was freezing taxes at the last sale price. Late last month, I wrote about the changing character of Provincetown going the way of “Fire Island” in New York.

What we are finding is that the character of these towns is changing, too. A night out on the town is skyrocketing; instead of spending $30 or $40, it is now $50 or $60. As a result, upscale stores and restaurants are driving out local establishments.

When I first went to P’town in the ’50s and ’60s, it was what my father called a bohemian town. Walking down Commercial Street, you could find artists willing to paint your portrait. By the 2000s, they were nowhere to be found. There used to be street vendors and Ellie, who would “sing for a buck,” along with mimes. But it all ended with Ellie.

I know a photographer for the local newspapers who had to leave because he couldn’t find housing. In Truro, there was a long, drawn-out court fight over low-income and seasonal housing—yet these are often the very same people who complain about a lack of staffing!

The character of the coast is changing. When I was growing up in the fifties, my mother’s aunt had a cottage on a New Hampshire lake that we visited every August. Growing up in the ’50s and ’60s, I knew plenty of neighbors who had summer cottages. The middle class could afford cottages back then on the Cape or the Connecticut shore, but now the middle class has been priced out. Even renting a cottage is out of reach; an average Cape Cod cottage rental costs about $3,400 per week during the peak summer season! And you better believe that in four or five years, I might just look at renting out or selling my cottage and taking the money and running.

The good news is that the next-door cottage sold for half a million dollars. The bad news is that my taxes are going up! All up and down the coast, people are taking the money and running.

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When I was proofreading with the AI and afterwards I ask it about improvements and thoughts, it replied:

I think the trend you’re describing is absolutely real, but I’d characterize it a little differently than simply “coastal property is skyrocketing.”

What’s happening on Cape Cod is more interesting: coastal property is becoming a luxury asset rather than ordinary housing.

The numbers support the basic observation. The median single-family sale price on Cape Cod was about $790,000 in 2025, compared with $765,000 in 2024. And in June 2026, the median reached $825,000. 

But the really important statistic for your essay is this: 36% of Cape Cod's housing units are classified as seasonal, recreational, or occasional use. The state also estimates that about 5,800 year-round homes were converted to seasonal use between 2009 and 2019. 

That's exactly the phenomenon you're describing anecdotally.

And there's an important twist

Your observation about the $1 million-plus houses is particularly interesting because the market isn't simply saying “everything is expensive.”

The latest Cape Cod market data show strong demand for homes under $1 million, while $1 million-plus properties actually take longer to sell on average. In Q1 2026, homes below $1 million had a median 34.4 days on market, versus 77 days for homes at $1 million and above.