When Massachusetts car dealer Charles Fotopoulos paid $899,000 for a Nantucket cottage in 2021, he didn’t present the purchase as risk-free.
From the beginning, he treated it as a bet on how long the property could hold out.
Now, in 2026, the Atlantic Ocean still has not claimed 93 Baxter Road. But the distance from the rear of the cottage to a 40-foot drop has shrunk to only a few feet.
Here’s what to know
According to the New York Post, the 1951 cottage on Nantucket’s Sconset Bluff was already widely understood to be a risky buy when Fotopoulos and his wife, Miglena, purchased it.
The house was once hundreds of yards from the ocean, but by 2021, years of erosion had pushed the bluff’s edge dramatically closer.
Fotopoulos did not deny the danger. “It was cheap and I said ‘hey, I’ll buy it’,” he told the Nantucket Current when he bought the house. “The foundation is structurally sound, and with the geotubes there, unless we have a killer storm, I think we’re safe. A lot of people think I’m crazy, but if I get five years out of it, I think I’m good. I’ll take that any day.”
Previous owners Steven and Erin Freeman purchased the property for $1.53 million in 2007, back when about 50 to 70 feet still stood between the house and the bluff’s edge. When they sold, they took a loss of roughly $631,000.
Broker Jamie Howarth said the hazard was clear.
“They knew the risks going in,” Howarth said. “I was clear with him and we were clear with him that there was serious risk.”
More background
The property has also become tied to Nantucket’s long-running dispute over geotubes, giant sand-filled fabric barriers placed at the base of the bluff to slow erosion.
Confidence in that protection has weakened. In March 2026, after additional collapses, the chair of Nantucket’s Conservation Commission warned that the geotube project could be nearing “complete failure.” A winter storm with gusts above 80 mph removed even more sand, adding to worries about how fast the coast is changing.
What’s being done?
The main response has centered on permitting fights, enforcement efforts, and legal battles over whether coastal armoring should be allowed to continue.
The Conservation Commission voted in 2021 to remove the geotubes, but the Sconset Beach Preservation Fund did not comply.
Town Meeting voters narrowly rejected the project’s 3,000-foot expansion in spring 2026, while a Superior Court judge ruled in favor of the expansion permit in August 2026.
D. Anne Atherton of the Nantucket Coastal Conservancy said, “The presence of that pre-1978 house is what provides the legal justification, in part, for the permitting of hard armoring.”
Where can I learn more?
Homeowners in other coastal communities are making the same gamble as erosion and storms chew away at valuable property. These stories look at Nantucket demolitions, Massachusetts buyback debates, and bluffside homes at risk in California and the Carolinas.
• On Nantucket, Barry Sternlicht said “there’s absolutely nothing we can do” before demolishing his beachside home.
• In Isla Vista, experts warned waves are going to be hitting California bluffs with more energy.
• Along North Carolina’s coast, Outer Banks homes falling into the ocean became a stark warning.
• In Buxton, a homeowner moved a 264,500-pound beach house as erosion closed in on neighbors.
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