Floods: Helpful Website
Okay, nobody wants to think about flooding. Even now, three and a half years after Nashville’s devastating floods, realtors still are compelled to note “did not flood in 2010” on their descriptions. Nashville showed incredible strength after the events of May 2010.
An article in a recent magazine brought my attention to the issue of flooding, and I will share here some of its information. Anyone with a federal mortgage (90% of mortgages!) who buys a home in a government-designated flood zone must obtain flood insurance. Your lender will be able to tell you if the home you’re considering is in a flood zone. But even if you’re not in a flood zone, it could be a good insurance to consider, with an average cost of about $600 per year.
Check out all of the helpful information at the National Flood Insurance Program website: http://floodsmart.gov. There you can enter your address into a Risk Profile tool and the program will tell you whether your home is in the low, moderate, or high risk category. There’s also a scary widget at this site that allows you to estimate how much a flood (of varying depths: 1-inch, 3-inch, 6-inch, 1-foot, 4-feet, etc) would end up costing you.
As we move closer to 2014, it might be a good time to think about protecting your home with some additional insurance: the kind no one wants to think about.
