Fearing Floods? What to Know Before Buying a Home

Your home is your castle, but you probably never envisioned having an indoor swimming pool. During flood season, that’s exactly what can happen.

“The best way to mitigate the risk of flood is to avoid buying a home in a known flood zone,” says Mark Snyder, a claims expert at Hi Marley, a communication platform for the insurance industry. Snyder has also worked for several insurance companies.

Because not all flooding happens in a flood zone, Snyder suggests that if you’re buying a home, you should consider the following factors:

• The elevation of your property relative to the rest of the area.  In other words, Snyder says, “Don’t buy the lowest-elevation house in the neighborhood.”
• Stormwater and groundwater drainage scheme, capacity and flow rates. When it rains, do you have streams and mini-lakes appearing in your yard? Those could threaten your home.
• Water intrusion history for the property. You’ll want to at least look at the past 10 years.
• Development plans. You’ll want to look at “any housing or commercial development plans by the city or county that will reduce storm run-off capacity and negatively impact groundwater drainage approach or storm run-off flow rate,” Snyder says.
• That scenic creek nearby. Could it turn into a raging river? “Any bucolic streams on the property that, while look good on the surface, could turn into significant water intrusion sources,” Snyder says.

Getting this information might not be exactly easy, but Snyder says one of the best ways to understand a property’s history and potential for water threats is to to talk to as many neighbors as possible. You could also hire a civil engineer with knowledge of the local area to perform a flood risk assessment.

Benson also points out that you can ask the listing agent to obtain the seller’s disclosure notice from their client, the seller. “This is a document where the seller is required to disclosure all defects and history of the property that they are aware of. This includes whether the land it sits on or the home itself has flooded in the past,” Benson says.

Benson, too, likes the idea of talking to the neighbors about whether the homes in the area have flooded. After all, if you’re looking to buy a house, you’re looking for a lot of intel. You aren’t just worried about floods; you’re curious about the neighborhood, the schools and whether you live next to a noisy neighbor or somebody who is likely to borrow all of your gardening tools.

In all seriousness, you want to make sure you do everything you can to keep your home safe from floods. Dampness tended to be a feature in castles, but that’s not a selling point in a house today. Your swimming pool belongs outside.

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Photo Credit: Zastolskiy Victor / Shutterstock.com