Anonymous wrote:I have a home in a FEMA flood zone. At least that means I can get flood insurance. Houses down the street can be flooded and aren't eligible for the insurance.

This is not true. I have a home with a flood score of 5, and like a previous PP if your read more on flood factor, flood water is not expected to damage our home because of how far off the ground our house is and its location on the lot. We purchased flood insurance as a precaution through FEMA and we are not in a designated flood area. Only 19 communities in all of Virginia do not participate in the national flood insurance program. In NoVa I just looked and all of Alexandria, Arlington, Falls Church, and Fairfax County participates, for example. Because our flood risk is low according to FEMA, our premium is only $350/year.

I have a home in a FEMA flood zone. At least that means I can get flood insurance. Houses down the street can be flooded and aren't eligible for the insurance.

Anonymous wrote:I wouldn’t buy a house with a high flood factor. Flooding is only going to only get worse and it’s not worth it.

There’s a lot of nuance to this. Poster with the score of 7 - our home has an 85 percent risk of less than one inch of water to the driveway in 15 years according to their methodology, which will cause an estimated 100 dollars in damage.

I wouldn’t buy a house with a high flood factor. Flooding is only going to only get worse and it’s not worth it.

Anonymous wrote:It really depends. My house is a 6/10… because the overall score doesn’t take into account that my newer build house was built on an elevated slab. If you go to the flood factor website, though, you can see that it also says “Flooding is unlikely to damage this home - Based on this home's first floor elevation of 2ft, this home is elevated above flood damage projections.”

If I had only at the overall score, I would have run screaming. So make sure you look at the details.

PP here. Yeah we have the same issue. The part of the house it shows as flooding is our driveway (which is sloped since our house is on a hill). But somehow we are still 7/10.

Anonymous wrote:do you have a sense of how accurate the scores are? would you not put an offer in on a place that has a high score?

Redfin has really done a job of scaring buyers and sellers with this new flood factor data on their website. 7/10 flood factor for example can mean you have a 65% chance of 1 inch of water intruding on your property...in 10 years.

If this is important to you, I would seek out actual FEMA data and base your decision on that.

It really depends. My house is a 6/10… because the overall score doesn’t take into account that my newer build house was built on an elevated slab. If you go to the flood factor website, though, you can see that it also says “Flooding is unlikely to damage this home - Based on this home's first floor elevation of 2ft, this home is elevated above flood damage projections.”

If I had only at the overall score, I would have run screaming. So make sure you look at the details.

Our house was a 7 on flood factor but we bought anyway. Our home sits literally on a hill. There’s a creek down the street below us which is the reason but the flood factor maps and scores make little sense, some homes down the street closer to the creek and that sit lower to ours have lower scores. I know it’s supposed to be more accurate than the FEMA maps but I am skeptical. Climate change sucks but the only way we would flood is if the creek rose like 40 feet so I’m not losing sleep over it - our entire neighborhood would basically be underwater. Wildfires, tornados, hurricanes, flooding, earth quakes, etc. are all risks of homeownership.

I would not go by the score alone, but I would (and did) research flood risk regardless.

do you have a sense of how accurate the scores are? would you not put an offer in on a place that has a high score?