Date: 10.09.2024

Published On: https://www.wsj.com/real-estate/the-quest-for-a-hurricane-proof-house-6e3c8984

Go inside Florida’s multimillion-dollar home designed to withstand the strongest of hurricanes

MIAMI—Millions of people fled Florida’s West Coast this week to escape a hurricane with enough force to drown and flatten neighborhoods. Few homes in Florida could be expected to withstand the most powerful storms.

But with enough money, you can try to make one. When construction executive Sean Murphy was ready to build his next Miami house, he wanted to make it one of the most hurricane-proof homes ever built—a tall order in storm-prone Florida. Even though Murphy’s home isn’t in the path of Hurricane Milton, the South Florida area is regularly threatened by powerful hurricanes.

As the co-president at Coastal Construction Group of South Florida, one of the largest construction firms in the state, Murphy has had extensive experience building structures to withstand hurricane-force winds. Now he is taking all of that expertise and distilling it into his eight-bedroom mansion in Miami’s waterfront community of Coconut Grove. The unique hurricane-proof elements that he built into the home added about 15% to the cost of construction. If someone added these elements to a home as part of a renovation, however, it would be cost-prohibitive, he said.