Flood insurance costs compel homeowners to raise their homes

Flood homeowners Insurance Rates raising homes

The new maps that have been released by FEMA are placing pressure on policyholders through rising costs.

Now that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has released its new maps, many homeowners are finding that their flood insurance costs are high enough to have them pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to raise their homes to bring the premiums down.

FEMA has rewritten the Louisiana flooding zone maps, requiring many to raise their homes.

The increased risk of water damage has caused FEMA to have to change the rules when it comes to the zones that are now considered to have a high chance of flooding. There were examples in which the annual flood insurance premiums would increase from $388 to $18,000 if the homes were not raised 8 feet above the ground, with the space beneath filled in.

Flood  homeowners Insurance Rates raising homesThis flood insurance news is not limited to Louisiana, but affects hundreds of coastal communities.

Homeowners living in all of the 350 coastal communities across the United States will soon all be receiving similar news from FEMA as the agency continues onward with a broad scale effort to recreate the flood insurance maps. This is being done to help to anticipate the future patterns and risk associated with storms.

FEMA has already revealed the details of the flood insurance maps for the communities along the Gulf Coast as well as in the Northeastern part of the country. Its goal is to complete the assessments for the Great Lakes communities, those on the West Coast, and those in Florida by 2016. The new maps have already added 32,000 homes located in New Jersey into flooding risk zones when they hadn’t previously been designated that way. There have been tens of thousands of other homeowners who have experienced this same situation across Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New York, Connecticut, and Louisiana.

Officially, complying with the FEMA maps is voluntary for communities. However, if a town votes not to comply with the zoning from the agency, then none of the homes within them are eligible to receive National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) coverage. This program currently covers approximately 5.6 million homes throughout the United States.

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