Flood Zones

We’re down to just barely a week left until we’re supposed to be closing on the new house. I will admit that I tend to be somewhat of a chronic worrier, and since it feels like everything in my life has been going so great lately I keep waiting for the ball to drop and something to go horribly wrong. I was so sure this was happening the other day when I got an email from the mortgage underwriter telling me that the house had been determined to be in a high-risk flood zone. This left me worried and confused, as we had already talked to the next door neighbors about the area and they said they weren’t considered to be in the flood zone. I started panicking because I had not budgeted for flood insurance and I didn’t know what this new information would do to the value of the house. I took to Google (as I so often do) and saw that flood insurance can range from only a couple hundred dollars a year to a couple thousand a year. I’m pretty sure I must have been having an off day, because I started assuming all the worst case scenarios. We’d have to spend an extra $100 or more a month on flood insurance, which would totally throw off my housing budget. The value of the house would go down by about 50%. The house would end up flooding before we even moved in. My imagination was just running wild, and not in a good way.

As luck would have it, I happen to have the best fiancé in the world! I went to talk to him and he could tell I was on the verge of breaking down from all of my worries. He took control and told me to relax and it would be ok. He then took to Google himself (really, who doesn’t do this often) and first found out how to contest your flood zone mapping. I hadn’t managed to get any quotes for flood insurance yet, so he called an insurance company to see what they could tell him. This turned out to be the most help because they let him know that the property already had a LOMA amendment on it that exempted it from the flood zone. After finding that out he called FEMA to get a copy of the LOMA letter so we could forward that on to the mortgage company to prove the exemption.

It will probably be another day or two before we get any kind of official notice from the mortgage company about whether they are updating our flood zoning, but we’re hoping for good news. The fiancé and I decided that even if we get moved to a low/no-risk flood zone we will probably go ahead and get the insurance. Being in a low/no-risk zone will make our premiums much lower, though, so it won’t break the budget. Always better to hope for the best, but still prepare for the worst.

Here's to hoping everything else is smooth sailing up through closing!