![]() But most buyers in the city’s beachfront neighborhoods aren’t worried. That is in spite of the fact that Scornavacca has noticed water levels around Miami Beach rise around a foot over the course of his adult life. Sea-level rise in South Florida is “not a prevalent thing for home sellers,”said Tony Scornavacca, a real estate agent who works in the Coconut Grove neighborhood of Miami, Florida. To support our nonprofit environmental journalism, please consider disabling your ad-blocker to allow ads on Grist. When Hurricane Harvey slammed into Texas, for instance, more than half of all damaged homes were outside FEMA flood zones. However, simply being inside a flood zone doesn’t mean a home has ever flooded, and there are plenty of homes outside these zones that see frequent and significant water damage. Members of the public can search the flood map database of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, to find out whether a home is inside a designated flood zone, and thus whether it requires flood insurance. To make matters worse, homeowners who live in these states don’t have any way to find out whether a home has flooded. Other offending states include population centers like Virginia and Georgia, plus states like Missouri and Maryland with long histories of riverine and ocean flooding. These laggards include Florida, New York, and New Jersey, all of which rank in the top five states with the largest coastal populations. More than one-third of states have no flood disclosure laws whatsoever, and a few more have laws that experts deem too weak or too vague. When it comes to disclosing flood history, though, there’s no federal mandate, and state requirements are spotty. What do you do? Do you have a responsibility to discuss the flood with would-be buyers, even if it means scaring them off? Or can you omit unflattering information that hasn’t even left an enduring mark on the property? After all, the flood was years ago. Your real estate agent suggests that you don’t mention the flood, especially since the house has been fixed and there are no structural defects. You have to sell the house in the next few months before you move to Dallas, and you’re worried about scaring off buyers. The storms seem to be more frequent in recent years, and more severe. You fixed everything like a good owner should, but you also know that it could happen again. You tell them about the nice neighborhood, the good restaurants nearby, and the community pool - but there’s one thing you hesitate to mention: The house flooded four years ago during a hurricane, ruining the living room. You own a house in Tampa, but you’re changing jobs, so you put the house on the market. Imagine you’re moving from Tampa, Florida, to Dallas, Texas. This article is part of Ask Umbra’s guide on How to Build a Flood-Resilient Community.
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