Is Your Home at Risk of Flooding? The Data Is Hard to Find
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In Florida, Missouri, North Carolina and other states where flooding is common, home buyers have little or no explicit legal right to know whether their property has ever been flooded. It is difficult for inspectors to assess if a home is a flood risk unless they happen to visit at high tide or during a heavy rainstorm.
Overall, about two dozen states don’t require sellers to disclose if a property has previously flooded, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council, a nonprofit group of lawyers and scientists that advocates on environmental issues. Many of these states also don’t require sellers to indicate whether a property is situated in a flood zone. In New York, sellers can opt to pay the buyer a $500 credit at closing rather than provide a disclosure form that includes information about a property’s flooding history, according to the NRDC.
Some U.S. lawmakers want to change this, particularly after recent floods caused home and car damage in Oklahoma and Louisiana. The House Financial Services Committee passed legislation this week that would require the Federal Emergency Management Agency to share information about a property’s flood history with current homeowners and buyers under contract to purchase a home. It would appropriate $500 million in annual funding for flood-zone mapping and expand mapping to all areas of the U.S.
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Federal flood maps, which outline flood zones, are designed to help set insurance premiums, but have a number of drawbacks as a source of information for would-be home buyers. They don’t take into account future sea-level rise or increased risk of more intense hurricanes.
“We know the maps are fundamentally wrong,” said Matthew Eby, founder and executive director of First Street, a nonprofit that advocates for providing homeowners with more information about flooding and climate change. “The maps are out of date.” Budget constraints have meant that large areas, mainly in the middle of the country, that are at risk of flooding from rivers and heavy rainfall aren’t mapped at all, according to an analysis of FEMA data by First Street, which is working with academics to build a database to address the issue.
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https://www.wsj.com/articles/is-your-home-at-risk-of-flooding-the-data-is-hard-to-find-11560418204 (paid subscription)
