by DocHyder » Thu Mar 19, 2009 08:49 pm
My wife and I have a FHA type mortgage on our home and property. We have been seeing (like a lot of other people) big jumps in our required flood insurance. Our house though actually rest on a side of a hill. It does not fall into the flood plain maps but because our adjoining pasture land does we have to have flood insurance. We've been told this because the house parcel and the farm pasture parcel are considered together in the mortgage. We have also heard that we could get the flood insurance requirement removed if we get a special land survey done or something of that nature. My question what do we need to do specifically to proceed on this? Our mortgage is thru Wells Fargo and the flood insurance thru Allstate. The insurance does not cover contents. The house would not be flooded in even a 10,000 year flood. Thank you for whatever help you can be.
Posted: Fri Mar 20, 2009 07:06 am Post Subject:
The insurance does not cover contents. The house would not be flooded in even a 10,000 year flood. Thank you for whatever help you can be.
Well, if I have been you I wouldn't have been too sure about it. Lemme tell you that dropping coverage isn't much difficult, but if you get struck by the peril in future, you wouldn't receive any coverage. Standard homeowners policy won't cover losses caused by flood.
Posted: Fri Mar 20, 2009 07:30 am Post Subject:
I tend to agree with what coffee has said ….don’t be so sure that your home would never be flooded. Yeah, we generally don’t want to think about the worse even when its the truth. You can obtain the Flood Insurance Rate Map from the FEMA site to check whether or not your house falls under the flood zone.
Further if you believe that chances of flood damage in your property is negligible, you may request for Letter of determination review, letter of map amendment or letter of map revision on fill form from the FEMA website. The website would provide you the steps that need to be followed by you in declaring the property outside the flood zone.
Posted: Fri Mar 20, 2009 05:35 pm Post Subject:
Thank you for your direction on FEMA. I'm not worried about being flooded. We live on a hill in the hills in an elevated home with no major body of water nearby. We have a small branch out back which is the reason for the property being in flood plain. The parcel the home is on is actually not in the flood plain. What I don't like is having to pay a lot of insurance for something could never happen. And I never have a problem thinking about worst case scenarios. I would prefer to have more insurance really but not for something that is the least likely to happen. Regards, DocHyder.
Posted: Fri Mar 20, 2009 08:21 pm Post Subject:
I'm not sure how expensive your flood insurance is, but if it's high...here's a direction you may not have considered:
Depending on how long you have been with Wells Fargo (and how much you owe)...you can have your pasture land surveyed and parceled separately than your residence. Wells Fargo can either release part of the property (possible, but not that common) or they could refinance with the mortgage based only on the property.
If you can't get them to release the flood insurance requirement, then you could try the above.
There are normally tax advantages (from the property tax standpoint) with having pasture land separate, but this would depend on your state.
If the tax advantages plus the cost of the flood insurance aren't high...then I personally wouldn't deal with the hassle. It could be fairly costly. On the other hand, if it save 200-300 a year and you have 25 years left...maybe it's worth it!
Good Luck!
Posted: Sun Mar 22, 2009 05:56 am Post Subject:
well, you can never be too sure that your house won't ever be flooded! but if you're insistent on cancelling the policy, get someone to take a look at your property, and if possible, map the small branch and your home separately. that way, you wouldn't have to pay for flood insurance on your home. but be warned, that should flood knock on your doors, you won't be covered. we can never really predict the future, you know.
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