Mortgaging a property with high risk of surface water flooding

[CarinaMarina]

We have found a property we love in the perfect location, but it has a (very pretty, low down and shallow) stream in the garden.

With a bit of delving the estate agents confirmed that it is in a high flood risk area - when I did an EA postcode search it is high risk for surface water flooding, but not for rivers. The vendors have lived there since the properties were built 34 years ago, and it has never flooded. The estate was built over an underground beck.

The risk is one DH and are prepared to take, given the lack of history (and knowing that is no guarantee it will never happen), but my question is - will I get an 85% mortgage on it?

I ran a standard insurance quote and got plenty of bog standard prices, so it doesn't appear uninsurable. I also contacted a specialist broker who is looking into flood cover through Flood Re for me.

My mortgage adviser gave a rather non-committal response that the lender's underwriting approach rather depends on what the surveyor recommends, so I'm no better off really.

Any experiences with mortgaging such properties? I'm reluctant to spend money on surveys, searches and reports if I'm ultimately going to have find another 10-15% deposit, which is the money we'll use to update it into our beautiful forever home on stilts...

Interesting point, our current property has a medium risk of surface water flooding and I got a 95% mortgage on that, and I didn't even know. The garden is oddly soft.

My parents is a high risk of surface flooding and they had no issues nor have any of the other properties in the area.

We have a risk of flooding to our house, bottom of a hill with an culvert running under the house. We weren't aware until the searches came back. The surveyor said there was no evidence of flooding (1930s house) & to see what insurance companies said. We got loads of quotes and nobody raised an eyebrow and the mortgage company didn't have a problem with it so we proceeded with the purchase.

Thanks...I was hopeful that the plentiful ordinary insurance quotes was a good sign, although as they don't cover floods ordinarily I wondered if that was in fact not a reliable indicator at all. I've got a guy looking at the cost of using Flood Re - won't know until Monday.

We're in a very similar position (I posted a question a week or so ago) and was advised to run away quickly!
We have had no issues getting the mortgage and insurance only seem bothered if it's flooded in the last ten years (ours flooded once in 2007).

Yes I did a search on MN and I think I saw your post! But posters often go down the route of "walk away" etc when my main question is whether the mortgage will be an issue, rather than do I actually need to worry about the risk.

Having worked in mortgages myself (but not for many, many years), my understanding is that most lenders only need to know that it is insurable.

We have just moved and had this same issue. Our mortgage provider (Santander) was very risk averse and advised that they didn't mortgage flood risk areas. Like you, we were content with the level of risk and wanted to proceed so we used a mortgage advisor. We had gone through the survey stage and felt the surveyor was overly cautious (at which point Santander said NO) so the advisor was able to recommend another mortgage provider who used a different surveyor. Hope that is of some help...

I wonder if you used my mortgage adviser Cabbage - she told me a very similar tale about a recent client! I'm staying with my existing lender as I have a redemption penalty, so they'll waive most of it if I port the product - but if they won't lend against a flood risk I guess I'll have to stomach the penalty and go elsewhere.

Yes, very helpful - thank you.

I think I'll get the adviser to ask the question first though...

Ooh I've just checked the map and despite the risk of surface water, it's only in Zone 1?

Our mortgage is with Barclays and they don't seem to care about the flood risk. Hasn't even been mentioned, they just agreed the mortgage.

Yes we ended up with a redemption penalty as we still had 8 years left on our mortgage. Still, we'd fallen in love with the house so wanted to go ahead. We were borderline zone1/2 so I think you'd be ok in zone 1. We found the online info really helpful and our seller also completed a specific flood report which eases our minds significantly!
It's not the same mortgage advisor, ours was most definitely male