Sandy Buyout Program Draws Little Interest From Shore

State officials this week announced $26.3 million in buyouts of Sandy-damaged homes in flood prone areas, though officials say there is still little to no interest in such buyouts in the Shore area.

The state Department of Environmental Protection announced the buyouts of 89 properties on Thursday in flood-prone sections of Woodbridge, the latest of over 361 homes that have been purchased in Sayreville, South River and Woodbridge that have cost over $100 million. There have also been buyouts in Cumberland County.

But the area of the state most affected by Sandy has generated little interest in the program, known as Blue Acres.

"We have definitely met with many Ocean County towns, but to date there hasn’t been much interest in the Blue Acres buyout program throughout the county," said Bob Considine, a DEP spokesman. "Certainly if these municipalities come back to us with areas where there are groups or clusters of residents who are interested in these voluntary buyouts, we would be receptive to working with them."

The reasoning is simple, officials have said: properties near the water at the Shore are often valued higher than those inland along the Raritan or Delaware rivers, and local residents are confident the post-Sandy real estate market will be reinvigorated down the road.

Thus far, despite a scattered number of individual applications for buyouts in the Shore area, there has been no interest on neighborhood-wide scales except for small sections of Neptune and Union Beach, in Monmouth County.

The administration of Gov. Chris Christie has committed more than $300 million of federal funding to the buyout program that is targeting 1,000 properties in tidal areas affected by Sandy, and another 300 properties in the Passaic River Basin that have repeatedly flooded.

The Blue Acres program also is working on potential buyouts in East Brunswick, Linden, Manville, Old Bridge, Neptune, Newark, Union Beach, and another section of Woodbridge, and has engaged in dialogue with residents and officials in many other communities, state officials said in a statement this week.

"We continue to make excellent progress toward our goal of moving willing sellers in flood-prone areas out of harm's way," said Christie, in a statement. "In cooperation with the federal government, my Administration is working hard to expedite this process and to help these victims of the storm get on with their lives.''

Administrators of the Blue Acres program have previously said that buyouts of homes must be done on a neighborhood-wide basis – not scattered throughout neighborhoods – since the lack of a structure in an area can actually increase the flood hazard risk for surrounding properties.

Homeowners interested in selling their homes through this process can contact the DEP's Blue Acres Program at 609-984-0500, the DEP said.