House purchase - Flood Risk 3

Stewd18

My wife and I have rather fallen for a house in Devon. We want to put an offer in but we've done some preliminary due diligence and the Environment Agency website suggests that the house is in a high surface flood risk area - a 1 in 30 chance. This appears to be extremely high.

Assuming we can get comfortable with the risk - the existing owners say the house has not flooded since the time they've had it - 1960s, does anyone have any insight into whether this will be problematic from a mortgage perspective. I've done some dummy insurance quotes and there are insurers willing to insure (although plenty of others online who won't).

walwyn1978

You’ll be much more limited in terms of who will lend, because some won’t want the risk. But you can still get mortgages. Possibly get a broker involved to help find those that will lend.

AnotherJoe

From what I've seen these things are far too general, your house could be high up but within an area that has or might flood, and everything gets tarred with the same brush/postcode.

As said it may be your lender or insurance companies that are the real blocker. You also need to look at it yourself and take a view. Is it level with other houses, or high up, or at the bottom o fa dip, etc?

Davesnave

No water ingress to the house since the 1960s suggests the chance of flooding is low, but as Joe says, individual properties will have levels of risk different from the immediate area/post code. There are people in my post code who've had a surface water problem, but a quick visual survey around my house would be enough to see that it couldn't flood. Do remember, however, that being on a slope isn't in itself proof against surface water flooding.

It seems from a recent thread that some insurers define flood risk via the whole area of the property (i.e. what's inside the red line on the plan) while others focus on the house and any outbuildings. The latter helps if the garden is subject to occasional flooding, as indeed it might where surface water is the issue.

Linton

Our house is in Flood Zone 3. It wasnt an issue for a mortgage. Aviva's house insurance quote was over £500, Saga's was less than half that figure.