Found out my house is high flood risk

Oomz

user1977 said:

Oomz said:

user1977 said:

Oomz said:

Is there anything I can do regarding the solicitors? Can I put in a complaint to the Ombudsman for negligence? Is it negligence?

Being risk averse I might not have bought the house knowing this information.

It isn't negligence for a solicitor to fail to suggest that you buy every search under the sun (especially if you were intending to interpret the results in a fairly peculiar way). Even if it were, what remedy would you be seeking? Your house is still worth the same, given that it does not appear to be under any sort of material flood risk.

And even if you had a valid cause for complaint, no you can't complain directly to the Ombudsman, you'd need to go through the firm's own complaints procedure first (which they should have explained to you at the outset).

As you say, you're having an overreaction. I suggest you find other ways of dealing with it, rather than lashing out at your solicitor.

After reading more into the environmental search, it appears it's a very common and standard search that is carried out to check a number of things (subsidence, radon, contamination) including flood risk.

Yes, and look at the number of threads we've had here from people baffled/worried about the search results. Things like subsidence and radon risk are going to be much the same for any property in a given neighbourhood, they're not particularly useful data (assuming all your options are in the same area). What's the point of getting the searches if you don't understand how they're created and what the results actually mean? I doubt your solicitors would do more than shrug, even if they had recommended the searches. So then what would you have done? Worry about the little bit of blue on your driveway and ignore all the other evidence that there isn't a flood problem?

So to your point, lots of people do worry about search results. I know I said this is my forever home but if my circumstances changed and I wanted to sell it, I would not like buyers to be worried and pulling out of the sale or trying to negotiate a lower price because of it.

Oomz

Ksw3 said:

Could you see if you could make some changes to the front of your property whilst doing the extension which would give you some reassurance? 

I've thought about soakaways and permeable driveways to reduce water run off and to give water somewhere to go if a flood did creep up the drive.

I've even been thinking of flood resilience and resistant measures but probably won't act on them as it seems a little irrational - no other house in the area has done anything.

vacheron

I'd base the risk on what you know rather than what a website tells you.

If you put my address into the search it shows the lowest risk for everything, yet my garage has been flooded twice in the last 12 years because my driveway slopes gently down, so as soon as flow from the driveway overwhelms the drainage channel in front of the garage doors, you'll end up with anything from 1-2 inches of water in the garage. It's an all or nothing thing requiring huge amounts of rainfall in a very short space of time, but it happens.

I'd say to keep your gutters and gullys clean and clear, and then ignore it. 

 

Oomz

MysteryMe said:

"I have never seen a hint of flooding anywhere, nor have the neighbours who are all retired and lived in the culdesac for 25+ years. The pensioner i bought the house from lived there for 38 years and said there has never been flooding on the solicitors form. There has been no historical flood alerts or flood history in the area."

These are your own words, this is the real word that you are living in. Not some internet search tool. 

There was a thread a couple of years back again with a similar query and out of curiosity I checked and apparently I am also in a high risk area. I have lived in my house for close to 30 years, in one of the driest parts of the country and there has not been even a hint of flooding anywhere that I am aware of. No large bodies of water forming on roads, no drives flooded. 

After rolling my eyes, I carried on with my life.

So I guess I'm not the only one who has realised there flood risk after getting the keys to the house.

Oomz

Dustyevsky said:

Your own way of looking at the world is possibly why your title to the thread is wrong. Your house isn't at a high risk of surface water flooding, it's your drive, or part of it, that might be at risk in the event of severe wet weather. Join the club; there must be millions in this position.

A practical thing you can do, if you're a practical person, is to use a laser level to work out how high water would have to be to enter the house. That's the only danger worth worrying about. Most floor levels are well above the height at the base of the walls, and given what you've told us, it seems unlikely the house itself would be at risk. Seeing just how unlikely, bearing in mind the topography, might be a way of reducing the stress you feel.

The topography isn't great, the culdesac is a short branch off a longer street that all comes downhill so some of the rainwater and my house is infront of the lowest point in the culdesac.

RHemmings

Oomz said:

MysteryMe said:

"I have never seen a hint of flooding anywhere, nor have the neighbours who are all retired and lived in the culdesac for 25+ years. The pensioner i bought the house from lived there for 38 years and said there has never been flooding on the solicitors form. There has been no historical flood alerts or flood history in the area."

These are your own words, this is the real word that you are living in. Not some internet search tool. 

There was a thread a couple of years back again with a similar query and out of curiosity I checked and apparently I am also in a high risk area. I have lived in my house for close to 30 years, in one of the driest parts of the country and there has not been even a hint of flooding anywhere that I am aware of. No large bodies of water forming on roads, no drives flooded. 

After rolling my eyes, I carried on with my life.

So I guess I'm not the only one who has realised there flood risk after getting the keys to the house.

Given the thread, maybe that should be 'alleged flood risk'. 

vacheron

Oomz said:

To my surprise, my house which i purchased 3.5 years ago is high risk for surface water flooding on the front driveway, medium for the neighbouring drives and low/verylow everywhere else.

Do you have a garage, or just a driveway? garages are the same height as the driveway because you need to drive cars in them. You will have noticed however that houses have external doors with steps up to them about 6" higher than the outside ground level (including doors from garages into the house. This is the reason why.

Cars similarly can survive standing in 6" of water. So unless you are parking a go-cart on your drive there is no real risk.

If you do have a garage and you think that may flood, do what I do now and store anything that isn't happy sitting in a couple of inches of water for an hour or two on shelves or storage just a few inches off the ground "just in case".

KittenChops

My last house - lived in for 12.5 years.  Looked at the online flood risk in the process of selling and apparently part of the back garden was high risk for surface flooding.  I assume this is determined by simply looking at the height of the land (the house was built on a slope so front door opened onto ground floor, walk through the house to the back which had steps down to the garden, almost a floor lower than the ground floor of the house).  In reality, we never had so much as a puddle out there.  I think prospective purchasers would be better informed by the seller's answers on the TA6.
(But I do think it odd that no environmental search was carried out & the lender didn't require it.)

user1977

Oomz said:

user1977 said:

Oomz said:

user1977 said:

Oomz said:

Is there anything I can do regarding the solicitors? Can I put in a complaint to the Ombudsman for negligence? Is it negligence?

Being risk averse I might not have bought the house knowing this information.

It isn't negligence for a solicitor to fail to suggest that you buy every search under the sun (especially if you were intending to interpret the results in a fairly peculiar way). Even if it were, what remedy would you be seeking? Your house is still worth the same, given that it does not appear to be under any sort of material flood risk.

And even if you had a valid cause for complaint, no you can't complain directly to the Ombudsman, you'd need to go through the firm's own complaints procedure first (which they should have explained to you at the outset).

As you say, you're having an overreaction. I suggest you find other ways of dealing with it, rather than lashing out at your solicitor.

After reading more into the environmental search, it appears it's a very common and standard search that is carried out to check a number of things (subsidence, radon, contamination) including flood risk.

Yes, and look at the number of threads we've had here from people baffled/worried about the search results. Things like subsidence and radon risk are going to be much the same for any property in a given neighbourhood, they're not particularly useful data (assuming all your options are in the same area). What's the point of getting the searches if you don't understand how they're created and what the results actually mean? I doubt your solicitors would do more than shrug, even if they had recommended the searches. So then what would you have done? Worry about the little bit of blue on your driveway and ignore all the other evidence that there isn't a flood problem?

So to your point, lots of people do worry about search results. I know I said this is my forever home but if my circumstances changed and I wanted to sell it, I would not like buyers to be worried and pulling out of the sale or trying to negotiate a lower price because of it.

Individual buyers may try to negotiate lower prices for all sorts of bizarre and illogical reasons. It doesn't mean you need to pander to them. The (objective) market value does not assume that the hypothetical buyer is particularly anxious.

MysteryMe

Oomz said:

MysteryMe said:

"I have never seen a hint of flooding anywhere, nor have the neighbours who are all retired and lived in the culdesac for 25+ years. The pensioner i bought the house from lived there for 38 years and said there has never been flooding on the solicitors form. There has been no historical flood alerts or flood history in the area."

These are your own words, this is the real word that you are living in. Not some internet search tool. 

There was a thread a couple of years back again with a similar query and out of curiosity I checked and apparently I am also in a high risk area. I have lived in my house for close to 30 years, in one of the driest parts of the country and there has not been even a hint of flooding anywhere that I am aware of. No large bodies of water forming on roads, no drives flooded. 

After rolling my eyes, I carried on with my life.

So I guess I'm not the only one who has realised there flood risk after getting the keys to the house.

The question regarding flooding was answered no by the vendor in 1995, which was truthful then as it would be me answering the same question to a prospective purchaser now. 

The only reason I checked was after seeing a thread on here and it was out of idle curiosity as that thread was similar to yours, someone seemingly living in a high flood risk area which had no actual history of flooding.

If I decided to sell and a buyer wanted to lower the price because of "flood risk" I'd invite them to tender actual proof of flooding rather than what a website says before entertaining such a reduction. 

You obviously enjoyed living in your new home before clicking on a search tool, so try not to let it worry you. Like you have said, there is no actual proof there has been any flooding where you are and the fact there are several neighbours who have lived there for many years would also indicate it's a perfectly pleasant place to live.