Anonymous wrote:Redfin is now showing the First Street flood map as an overlay on their map feature. It's really insane. The map shows the rare 0.02% flooding disaster based on first street's doomsday guess. This will absolutely affect market value for a lot of homeowners based largely in fear mongering.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:First street predicts the ritz in Georgetown has a 20% chance of flooding this year....

And apparently large parts of AU park are in food zone.

We sold our Dupont English basement condo despite it being terrifically located and easy to rent out because flood maps said it would be under water in the next 20 years. We didn’t want to be stuck with it.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The rating is for the entire property (and over the long term so it may be a risk estimated over the next 30 years). Older builders were not idiots and typically built on the highest elevation part of any parcel. So your house may be fine while an edge of the property may get water and it will still have a flood warning. If that is the case you can just explain when selling. You can get a land survey and argue with the rater for an adjustment but I don't know how effective that is.

+1

Friends of mine bought a home way up on a hill. Because a corner of their large lot is in a flood prone area they get rated as having a high flood risk even though there would have to be biblical levels of rain to begin to reach them.

Any remotely intelligent buyer/agent will be able to read in the listing description that the flood rating covers the parcel and see the house is built up higher.

For my friends’ house, I think the steep driveway would be more of a turnoff for buyers than the flood rating.

But depending on the type of soil, if the corner of their property floods, it might lead to slope instability which would impact the house. It's not just about "is my house higher than the flood?"

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The rating is for the entire property (and over the long term so it may be a risk estimated over the next 30 years). Older builders were not idiots and typically built on the highest elevation part of any parcel. So your house may be fine while an edge of the property may get water and it will still have a flood warning. If that is the case you can just explain when selling. You can get a land survey and argue with the rater for an adjustment but I don't know how effective that is.

+1

Friends of mine bought a home way up on a hill. Because a corner of their large lot is in a flood prone area they get rated as having a high flood risk even though there would have to be biblical levels of rain to begin to reach them.

Any remotely intelligent buyer/agent will be able to read in the listing description that the flood rating covers the parcel and see the house is built up higher.

For my friends’ house, I think the steep driveway would be more of a turnoff for buyers than the flood rating.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The rating is for the entire property (and over the long term so it may be a risk estimated over the next 30 years). Older builders were not idiots and typically built on the highest elevation part of any parcel. So your house may be fine while an edge of the property may get water and it will still have a flood warning. If that is the case you can just explain when selling. You can get a land survey and argue with the rater for an adjustment but I don't know how effective that is.

+1

Friends of mine bought a home way up on a hill. Because a corner of their large lot is in a flood prone area they get rated as having a high flood risk even though there would have to be biblical levels of rain to begin to reach them.

Any remotely intelligent buyer/agent will be able to read in the listing description that the flood rating covers the parcel and see the house is built up higher.

For my friends’ house, I think the steep driveway would be more of a turnoff for buyers than the flood rating.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't think a storm drain 100ft away and a dried up stream 600 feet away is all that unusual for the less densely populated areas of MoCo. But the point is, this model predicts there is a 20% chance this year that half my land will flood when it has never happened in recorded history, so color me skeptical. I know everyone is worried about climate change but this seems like hysteria.

Anyways I found this neat elevator map for anyone interested. Really helpful to just point somewhere on a map and it gives the elevation.
https://apps.nationalmap.gov/viewer/

What do the green zones mean? There are awfully a lot of them around everywhere

I think the green zones mean potential flooding. There is no key which is weird but I spent a good amount of time looking at this map and the green zones correlate pretty strongly with the first street flood map, not not entirely.

Is lighter green higher elevation than dark green? My house is in a light green zone with some darker green neighborhoods around me. I wish there was a key.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't think a storm drain 100ft away and a dried up stream 600 feet away is all that unusual for the less densely populated areas of MoCo. But the point is, this model predicts there is a 20% chance this year that half my land will flood when it has never happened in recorded history, so color me skeptical. I know everyone is worried about climate change but this seems like hysteria.

Anyways I found this neat elevator map for anyone interested. Really helpful to just point somewhere on a map and it gives the elevation.
https://apps.nationalmap.gov/viewer/

What do the green zones mean? There are awfully a lot of them around everywhere

I think the green zones mean potential flooding. There is no key which is weird but I spent a good amount of time looking at this map and the green zones correlate pretty strongly with the first street flood map, not not entirely.

Anonymous wrote:The rating is for the entire property (and over the long term so it may be a risk estimated over the next 30 years). Older builders were not idiots and typically built on the highest elevation part of any parcel. So your house may be fine while an edge of the property may get water and it will still have a flood warning. If that is the case you can just explain when selling. You can get a land survey and argue with the rater for an adjustment but I don't know how effective that is.

Anonymous wrote:FEMA maps are notoriously out of date, OP. Do NOT put any faith in them.

I believe you are at higher risk of flooding based on the proximity of the storm drain. It's hard for you to accept this, but with the higher frequency of more extreme weather events, that storm drain is a risk to your property. You may be on slightly higher ground, but when (not if) the water rises 30 feet in 3 hours, you won't be scoffing anymore.

Before FEMA updates its map for your area, you might want to sell. That's what people check, usually, and a flood-prone property is unsaleable.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't think a storm drain 100ft away and a dried up stream 600 feet away is all that unusual for the less densely populated areas of MoCo. But the point is, this model predicts there is a 20% chance this year that half my land will flood when it has never happened in recorded history, so color me skeptical. I know everyone is worried about climate change but this seems like hysteria.

Anyways I found this neat elevator map for anyone interested. Really helpful to just point somewhere on a map and it gives the elevation.
https://apps.nationalmap.gov/viewer/

What do the green zones mean? There are awfully a lot of them around everywhere

Anonymous wrote:I don't think a storm drain 100ft away and a dried up stream 600 feet away is all that unusual for the less densely populated areas of MoCo. But the point is, this model predicts there is a 20% chance this year that half my land will flood when it has never happened in recorded history, so color me skeptical. I know everyone is worried about climate change but this seems like hysteria.

Anyways I found this neat elevator map for anyone interested. Really helpful to just point somewhere on a map and it gives the elevation.
https://apps.nationalmap.gov/viewer/

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I just discovered that my house is rated 7/10 on the First Street flood factor that shows up on redfin. We bought the house about 3 years ago and I definitely do not remember it being rated that way then.

I have no idea what they base this stuff on but it seems inaccurate. My neighbors are all rated 1. We have had massive rain this year and we have never had water running or pooling near the house. Our old house which was at the bottom of a neighborhood hill had way more water issues and it is rated a 1/10. The only thing I can think of is that we have a storm drain easement on our property so there is a lot of water running out of that drain into the creek behind us but this drain is like 100 feet downwards from our house draining away. We are maybe 600 feet away from the creek, so not that close.

Question is, is there anything I can do? It seems so sketchy that this company gets to "predict" flooding and then ruin home values. Are we just screwed with our home value?

“storm drain easement” and “creek 600 feet away” are red flags. Small streams are very likely to flood during atmospheric river events and there are parts of the dc metro area that are prone to atmospheric rivers. Do you have flood insurance?