Advise please: flood risk map

[MeMeMeow85]

We’ve been super excited about a house we are in the process of buying. Currently SSTC. Building survey booked for early next week.

When we viewed, I noticed that there are storm drains along the road. I’ve just checked the online flood risk map and this particular house has shown as high risk!!! It’s across the whole depth/width of the large garden and a little bit to the front of the house...

Any advice please? I know this sounds ridiculous, but I feel devastated that we will likely have to walk away.

Assuming this type of risk impacts not only the plans I had for landscaping, but also the use of the garden, as well as damaging potential resale and possibility of getting insurance??!!!?

Any advice please? Best to move on?

flood-warning-information.service.gov.uk/long-term-flood-risk

As part of one purchase the local area searches pinged up a flood risk for a property and we paid more for an extra in depth flood report, and we decided to go ahead on the risk stated. The information on predicted frequency and extent of flooding was very useful.

But if it's bad, I'd be mentally prepared to walk. I live in an area of the country where flooding is inevitable and don't even view houses in some villages.

Walking away will a lot less devastating than dealing with a flood. You could try and get an insurance quote for the property, it is likely to be prohibitively expensive or uninsurable.

Are taking a mortgage? If so the lender may decline to lend due to the risk. And even if you are going to be mortgage free, it may effect resaleability as subsequent buyers may not be able to get a mortgage.

Would the flood waters be coming from a river? Or from heavy rain?

It is heavy rain issue. I think it is called “surface water”. Not flooding from a river

My parents have lived in their current property for 30 years. They are low risk for river flooding and high risk for surface water. They have never been flooded and only on a couple of occasions has it even looked like it could even be possible from surface water ie the road itself has been covered but it's never reached the house.

Both the front and back garden do get a bit waterlogged at times but it does drain well so quickly dries out again and has not affected the use of the garden nor has it damaged any of the planting that they have.

Their house was bought with a mortgage with no problem which has been extended since and although they do tend to have to search for insurance it's not too difficult to find nor expensive. If it's in an area like my parents that manages the risk then you should be ok however surface flooding is a serious issue near me and due to the nature of the area little can be done to minimize the risk. I would look not just at the risk but at the history and find out whether there has been flooding previously.

When we bought our house it wasn't in a flood risk area, but the EA moved the boundaries, so now we are.
In the 2007 summer deluge we were partially flooded by surface water, although our main risk is supposed to be from rivers (which are quite a way away, and have never threatened us)
There is nothing quite so frightening as seeing water creeping towards your house and knowing there is nothing you can do. Our entire garden and garage were underwater, but it stayed out of the house thank god, so very minor compared to what some people have happen to them.
For this reason, if we ever moved, I would make damn sure I was living on top of a hill! Every time we get heavy rain, which seems to happen more and more, I get very nervous. Personally, I would walk away. It's not worth the potential heartbreak.

I would walk away now - it is far less painful doing now than later. I have had the experience of water flowing towards my house and know what this is like

Whilst the map is probably worst-case scenario, I previously lived in a house at minor risk: We were only evacuated twice over ten years, but the anxiety I suffered when it rained heavily was awful and was definitely something to consider when moved.

Has the house actually been flooded or area affected previously? We rejected a lot of houses which we knew would have been terribly flooded in the pasts from a structural point of view.

Thanks all. The vendor has confirmed via email that they haven’t had any flooding (2015 to date) and that the previous vendor (1999 to 2015) didn’t have any issues either.

It seems that the storm drain runs alongside the front of the street of nearly all the houses and down the garden of this particular house, so only if there was torrential rain and that blocked would it be an issue. Feels like we would have more control over that than if it was a river flood risk etc.

We’re waiting on the survey next week and will then decide if we proceed

Appreciate the advice and chance to vent about my worries. Thanks!

OP, re my previous, it was a storm drain that flooded us (and like yours, it runs alongside the house)- it just couldn't cope with the amount of rain falling on the surrounding roads and burst out through the drain covers. Be very careful. If we were to move I would probably not disclose this to a vendor, because we made no insurance claim and sorted the damage to the garden and garage ourselves. Disclosing it would make a sale difficult. May not be ethical, but there you are. None of our neighbours had a problem, just us, purely because of the position of the drain.

*buyer, not vendor!

Thanks for the feedback @Lucisky. Would you lie though if you were asked the question directly?

What was the damage to the garden? Waterlogged? Was it easily/quickly fixed?

Our near flood experience was also surface water and drains unable to cope in a private road. My house was very marginally lower than others and we had water flowing towards our house- from that experience I would avoid it was stressful every time it rained

#MeMeMeow85, I would probably minimise like mad! (And, in the annals of flooding, compared to say, the Somerset Levels, it was extremely minor). Say something like, "oh yes, that drain flooded in 2007, but so did a lot of others...the house was fine".
I lost a lot of bedding plants and the garden looked a mess, but it recovered. Lost a lot of photos from the garage and other sentimental stuff and useful bits and bobs. Managed to get all the white goods in there up on bricks as the water started coming in.(The garage is integral, that's why we were so worried. The boiler had been installed on a brick plinth, now we know why.)
We still have a cache of sandbags just in case. You could always have a look around to see if there are any hidden away. Also, you might get a better/more truthful answer from the parish council (if there is one) they are usually very aware of local floods/flood risks.
Incidentally, six new houses have just been built in our road. Planning made them be built with the ground floor starting six feet up (so steps up to front door). This is because the flood risk here has changed so much over the years, principally because of increased heavy rainfall.
I love our house, but to be honest, if I had known how frightened I would be when we get too much rain now, we would never have moved here. It is truly horrible feeling, even though there was no danger of physical harm.

Actually that food risk map look a lot better than the ones for Westminster, Battersea, Chelsea, and all of Canary Wharf.

You may want to try an find out if it has ever flooded before, and if that was before after the storm drains were installed.

The detailed flood map for surface water where I live is extremely accurate and shows exactly where water tends to congregate when it rains hard.

I'd look at the site the actual house is on as well as just the postcoded flood risk map. My mum's house is in a high flood risk area by postcode - but the nature of the site where the house is elevated a good 7-8 foot off the level of the riverbank alongside it, means that the furthest it's ever likely to "flood" in the most extreme years of weather is to get up to the garden gate for a few hours before the river level subsides down.

I would be slightly wary of the flood risk data as well - it is only indicative. My house is shown in a medium surface water flood risk area and the map shows my neighbour's house located in the closest risk area. However, if I put in the address details for my neighbour's house, it is shown as not at risk of surface water flooding, and in fact nowhere in a radius of 100m is shown at being at any risk.

Surface water flood risk information is not suitable for identifying whether an individual property will flood. It gives an indication of the broad areas likely to be affected but is imprecise due to national assumptions made about rainfall, surface water run-off, topography and the stormwater drainage network.

Because of this, we report the highest risk within 20m of a specific location, such as an individual property. This means reports for neighbouring properties may show different levels of risk.

I work with people who have flooded (river and surface water) and it is devastating.

What would concern me about this property is not its history (and you only have a short history to go on in flooding terms) but what will happen in the future. There is the strong likelihood of future storms, especially summer ones, being higher intensity which will overwhelm the storm drain. Plus people are paving over more of their gardens which increases the amount of surface water. All you'd need is a new development that fed into the same storm drain system (not necessarily very close by) and in a long or intense rainfall event they could be redrawing the flood map to include your house as well as your garden.

Personally I would walk away, though I appreciate that's probably not what you want to hear!

We bought a house that was deemed by the environment agency high flood risk from a local river. Once I had a fantastic recorded robot voice message telling me flooding was expected and to secure any children and animals and move my car to a safe higher location. We never flooded or even got close. By the time we moved house 5 years later, they had changed the map slightly and we were no longer considered high risk.

I think you need more information.

We considered a house with a similar flood risk and spoke to our insurance broker. He said don't touch it with a barge pole as our insurance premiums would be sky high. I obtained quotes and he was right. From memory, it was approximately another £600 on our annual premium.

What if you ever want to sell it OP? Surely it will put ppl off ....