Thank you so much! I know that the taxes will be high, but we will not hold a mortgage, so taxes plus utilities is all we have to pay. I want my children to have this house, as my Grandparents and Parents had summer houses here and did not leave us theirs. I want to leave a legacy. Do you think another bedroom to make 4 is better?

I'm not a realtor, but as a home owner, I'd go with four bedrooms, especially at a beach house, where you are likely to have overnight guests.

I believe it depends on practically how much entertaining you plan on doing? How many kids do you have any grandkids? Your kids may also be able to additions later to the house.

Since the big hurricane, aren't there special building requirements for under decks there now?

Sounds as if your lot is sloped. Consider a barn style roof over a two story home with a basement -- the upstairs would be within the roof.

http://pdxclassichomes.com/files/2010/04/scan0004.jpg

The enclosed part of the home -- basement, main floor and upstairs -- would have a standard 4/12 roof but then you'd add 8' deep porches all the way around the house. The roof that covers the front and back porch would be a steep roof that also covers the upstairs exterior wall (w/cut outs for windows). If you did not want the porch to extend the full length of the house on front and back, part of the interior rooms of the main floor could be beneath the steep sloped roof, too.

The front porch and main living level could be at or near ground level and easily handicap accessible. With the stairs built to do so, a lift chair could be built in for when someone handicapped needed to access the upstairs or basement.

You could have room for two bedrooms (grandsons and granddaughters) with a bath and a half in between upstairs. You could have room for a master bedroom suite and all the essential rooms you'd need -- great room (kitchen, living, dining) and a laundry / mud room and entry/stairwell and even a study or office bonus room-- on the main floor so you would not need necessarily need to use the stairs on a daily basis.

Alternately, if you extended the length of the barn style porch to cover the end
porches, too ( rather than have a lower shed roof over those end porches), then you could even have three bedrooms upstairs with two baths --
actually 2 bath and a half room sets. A parents room would be in the center of the upstairs with his/hers bath and a half on each side in the corner and the two children's rooms would be on the other side of the upstairs of the house (with a stairwell in between) -- family friendly, definitely increasing resale potential.

With three bedrooms upstairs and two bath and a half room sets, you might not need a basement.

If you do choose to have a basement, you could add another master suite and a family room and plenty of walk in storage closets downstairs along the wall against the embankment with the mechanical room in one of those storage closets and it, too, would have a porch all the way across on the one side.

Yes, breakaway walls

http://www.app.com/story/news/local/ocean-county/sandy-recovery/2015/10/12/coastal-zone-standards-/72997856/

Thank you so much for the link. Thank Goodness I am in Zone X. Which is great because I am 1 block from the Ocean and 1 1/2 blocks from a lake. But our streets are AE, just the streets. We were not affected by Hurricane Sandy at all because our town started years ago putting Christmas Trees on the beach in fences to hold them. Over time we have nice dunes that stood up to the waves. We did have the Ocean and Lake cover the streets, but the dunes held and we only had about 3 ft of water on our lawn. But THANK YOU SO MUCH for alerting me to this!

If you put Jersey Shore into the Houzz search bar, there are some homes in the area. For breakaway walls, you need to Google. I saw a great episode of This Old House about it. The basic principle is to store things that don't matter as much, but are insured, on the bottom level. Like recreational equipment, garden tools etc. if a flood comes, the water breaks open the breakaway walls, washing around the pylons. It doesn't take the house with it because there's no resistance.