Flood search..advice please..oh and we just found out the house burnt down!

BritishBulldog

Hi all, we're in the process of buying our first house and just had the environmental search returned, which shows that some surrounding areas within 250m of the house have a risk of flooding at the once in 75 year event risk level due to standing water in a nearby field. The property itself has never flooded to the best of out knowledge nor have any in the development, again to the best of our knowledge. How does this affect our insurability, if at all?
The other issue we have found is that the house actually burnt down in 2008 and was pretty much rebuilt from scratch! It seems to have been done to a superbly high standard as the house is actually nicer than the others on the development (all built 2005)..does this affect insurability at all and would it affect the NHBC warranty?

G_M

Pity there wasn't a flood at the time of the fire!

Why don't you ring a few insurance companies, give them the property address/details, and ask for quotes? You'll have to do this at somepoint anyway.....

The rebuild should not be an issue provided it complied with Building Regs - ask for certificate.

Best people to ask about NHBC would be... er... let me think now... umm... HMRC?

ValHaller

The horizontal distance to the potential flooding is largely irrelevant as far as actual risk is concerned. It is the vertical distance which matters. Insurers used to be bothered by the horizontal distance, alhough I suspect that the penny will have dropped with most underwriters these days.

pyrolizzie

We have just had the same problem with a house purchase. Environmental search shows property on flood plain zone 3 (i.e. a 1 in 75 chance of flooding), which is the highest level, even thou Enviro agency have no historical data/knowledge of property ever been flooded.

The Property was in fact flooded in flash floods in that area in May 2007 due to drains not able to cope with the water.

I used 4 insurance compare websites and had to tell them about the flood as it was 6 years ago, that was not a problem, however the problem was that it lies on a flood plain zone 3, and from the bank of hundreds of insurers, I could only get half a dozen to quote and then the premium was through the roof, and some were stipulating massive excesses of £2,500 if the property ever flooded again.

The advice we have since received from solicitors and other people in the insurance industry is not to buy the property and to pull out.

Remember the flash floods in Sheffield in 2007 when the River Don burst its banks and Ulley reservoir was in danger of been breached and many other towns/villages were under water and this also happened in areas that are not on flood plains and are not normally prone to flooding.