post flood house sale

sadcaptain

Hi. We put our house on the market at the end of last summer. Plenty of viewings but no offers. We had just reduced the price in February when storm Ciara hit. Our house flooded. The house is not on or near a flood plain, and has never (to our knowledge) flooded before. The flood was a freak accident due to a nearby (1km?) culvert becoming blocked with storm debris and the water then diverting down a nearby hill and eventually to our property. We are currently in temporary accommodation. The insurance company are set to refurbish the house. Our plan after that was to put it back on the market. I thought our plan was sound, but I have since found out the the property information form we will need to fill in asks about any flooding. Obviously we will have to answer this honestly. My concerns/questions now are:

1. Will the flood lower the value of the property? if so, does anyone have a clue roughly by how much % ?
2. Will mortgage companies refuse to lend to potential buyers for the house?

Renting the house out isn't an option unfortunately, due to complicated reasons..
Thanks 

AdrianC

Only an interested putative buyer can tell you if it will reduce what they're willing to pay. Only they and you together can decide a mutually acceptable %age.

Some might, most won't. Insurers are more likely to be the issue.

Davesnave

The TA6 isn't the only way interested parties will find out about the flooding; the response they receive when they seek an insurance quotation will alert them, so it's best to be up-front about what happened.

Surface water flooding like you experienced isn't uncommon, but people don't usually see the potential for it until it happens. It almost happened to neighbours of ours in 2012, but they've been able to take fairly simple remedial action to remove the risk. In the case of your property, there may or may not be physical measures you could take to lessen the chance of something similar happening again, but even if there are potential remedies, some buyers will reject your house out of hand. A restricted market means a lower price.

If you pitch the price correctly, there will be those willing to ignore the stigma the house now has, but no one here can tell you exactly what % reduction would be appropriate. When my daughter bought a house that had suffered subsidence and been underpinned 20 years before, she paid 10% below the usual market value and  had a slightly raised insurance premium, but a normal mortgage rate. Six years on, her insurance is a normal price and she doesn't think the underpinning would be a concern now when selling.  Those are the sort of time scales one-off events may take before they are forgotten.

At least your property will be refurbished inside, which may well help you sell