This will change the rates that are being paid by residents of the area whose condition has been altered.
The federal government has now released the newly redrawn version of the flood insurance maps for Hampden County, Massachusetts, which will be required to be applied by communities on or before July 16 so that their residents will be eligible to take part in the national coverage program.
Several properties have been affected by the new map, though the actual number has not yet been released.
Communities are required to implement these new maps so that people living within them can be eligible to purchase coverage from the National Flood Insurance Program. An official from the state estimated that there will be a larger number of homeowners whose properties are now designated as being within flood zones on the new map than there were on previous editions of the maps.
This could also mean that
several more homeowners will be required to purchase flood insurance.
Flood insurance is a requirement for buildings that have mortgages from institutions with federal backing and that are in a designated zone on the FEMA maps with a 1 percent chance – or higher – of experiencing flooding on an annual basis. This is the criteria used for stating that a property is at a high flooding risk.
At one time, that was referred to as the 100 year flood zone, but this expression is no longer being used by officials as it has been misinterpreted by many people and has led them to falsely believe that their risk is lower than it actually is. Some banks also require that homeowners take out flood insurance when their property is within an area that has been designated as being prone to flooding.
Homeowners whose properties have been reclassified from having a lower or moderate risk to being within that higher risk category have been told that their flood insurance premiums could be considerably increasing. For some, this means more than a doubling of the rate that they currently pay. Naturally, this has many of these property owners upset and angry over the changes that are occurring quite suddenly in their areas.
