Buying house in flood risk area

[MyOchreRobin]

We are looking to buy a property. There is one we really like, but it has a very small river running quite close to the back garden. The government long-term flood checker says it has a very low risk of flooding and will continue to in the future.

The issue is the environmental report that we can. It says it has a high risk of flooding and parts of the property are in zone 2 and parts in zone 3. From the maps they have sent, it is the garden that is at risk. The map doesn't cover the house itself (but to make clear, it is a small garden). The risk because of climate change doesn't change or get worse.

Also, they found that there was a flood there over 25 years ago, but from the map, it never reached the house, just the garden and from that small river, it wasn't majorly impacting anyone on the street.

I have ran an insurance quote and there were no massively high premiums (just over £200 for 5 star cover) or excess either.

I'm just concerned about what we should do. Because obviously, if we buy and then want to resell, the new buyers will get all this information, which may make it challenging to sell.

Just sold one of these, the river being one of the main reasons for not making it a forever home.

In many ways it was lovely having nature at the bottom of the garden, kingfishers, herons and otters and things (also less romantic things like rats and mossies), paddling in the summer. Magical place for the kids to explore! But every time there were heavy rains and the water rose I was anxious, and I'm not generally a worrier. We had a big deck with a building on it that would have the foundations (of the deck) underwater a few times a year and no real way of assessing how much damage that was causing.

We were incredibly limited on house insurers as well so often paid a premium as there were only 1-3 companies who'd offer quotes.

In the end given that we have no idea what the future is going to bring in terms of storms and water levels etc with climate change I decided that having this niggle of concern in the back of my brain for the next however many decades wasn't worth it. There were lots of other factors in the move as well, but that was definitely one of them.

I wouldn't touch a house in any kind of flood risk situation however low the rating with a bargepole. We can clearly now see that the weather is changing, that's going to include along with increased blasts of heat, increased intense and heavy rainfall. Find another.

And I'm not actually disagreeing with what you're saying, as I said before, I like just countering just to fully understand thoughts.

None of the systems show the risk of flood would get any worse due to climate change. It's basically just follows a bit out of the river and is like that across all the models across all the years. Does this matter?

We lived not even that close to a very small river, more of a brook really. The point is that its a drainage route for surface water when theres heavy rain. And there will be more heavy rain in the coming years. That small river can very quickly burst its banks then flood the surrounding area. And as another poster mentioned, even if it doesn't, you'll be worried that this time it will.
Find another house.

Is the insurance covered by the Flood Re scheme?
My parents house flooded very badly 10 years ago, entirely attributable to someone dumping a couple of tons of builders rubble and the council (a LOT of dispute between the Environment Angency, town and county council) declining to clear culverts "to protect water voles". To our certain knowledge (the family bought from lived across the road), the house had never flooded in at least the preceding 125 yrs.
A consideration - yes, but try and talk to someone who knows the area well.

We also want to have a little noisy down the beck to see whats it's actually like down there. Especially stuff like slope and actual distance from house.

Before we got too far along the purchase process, I contacted the Environment Agency who say they can provide information on historic flooding for free. I got an email back (quite quickly, 10 days iirc) saying that the property has never flooded.

Well, the seller's written on the forms that it's flooded twice.

Ours is groundwater flooding (we are 5m from a river but it's more like a canal/pond bc it's so slow), the previous owner thinks it only happened after our local water authority 'started doing work up the road and I think it changed the water table' or something along those lines.

Had the seller not been honest with me from the start, I wouldn't have the faintest idea that it had flooded (well, one inch in the cellar) twice in the last five years.

As you keep coming back to this thread and replying to everyone, I think this is a nagging doubt that you need to address. If it were me, I would:

a) prepare some 'dear potential neighbour' letters to pop through letterboxes within 1/2 a mile asking for their views on flood risks

b) hit the street and see if you can find any locals out and about to talk to and,

c) definitely speak to an insurance broker. The problem with insurance and flooding isn't just whether your potential house has flooded, it's a postcode/area wide problem, a bit like car insurance, if one/some people nearby claim, it pushes up the premium for everyone

re: b), we walked up and down the street of an area we were thinking of buying in, and interrupted a woman who was power washing our drive, who pointed to two particular sections of this very long street and said 'don't buy there, there's a second HMO application in and the first one has caused loads of problems, and don't buy on x block from no. x to y, because they're all subsiding.

I really don't think there's any subsitute to local knowledge.

Unfortunately home sellers lie, and if there are floods, that doesn't mean people will claim, thus alerting insurers, which you would get a sense of when you come to arrange insurance.

I also wouldn't take all that much comfort on the local plains having refused building on flood plains in 2022; where I live now, there's a ton of developments on flood plains. If your local council falls on hard times and needs more council tax income, that permission, or lack of, could soon quickly change.

I have to agree with others re: changing weather too. Our last house was a rental on a quite fierce river; we had 24 hours of really heavy rain and I got up the next morning and I swear the river height had gone up by 3 metres. It was quite shocking. It flooded the entire bottom terrace of a 3 terrace garden and took away half of next door's garden furniture (they hadn't been warned this could happen either).

We seem to have a lot less rain these days, which makes the ground dry, so when heavy rain comes, it plays absolute havoc.

Wishing you the best of luck with whatever you decide.

Thank you. I think the annoying thing is that it doesn't look like the house itself is at risk on any of the models. I think if it clearly showed the house itself in the flood zone, it would be more clear cut. But the models basically just show it going into the garden and it's it.

As far as I'm aware, the houses weren't declined because of building on the flood zone. And for whatever reason, those houses werent seen as being in a high flood risk area despite being the same distance from the beck as our house. It's all a bit baffling with a bit too much contradictory information

Do you plan on this being a long term / forever home? Because even if there is no flood while you are there, the pool of potential buyers will be smaller due to the risk. Flood risk is the first thing I would check if looking at a property.

We did check it beforehand but the ones on the government website and environmental agency have very low risk for whatever reason. Even in the images, the flood models on those doesn't reach the property, not even the garden I don't think.

100% agree that selling the house is the thing that would make me worry most, but it has been sold multiple times (first time buyers who wanted somewhere bigger) and it doesn't seem to be an issue at the moment

In terms of insurance, how do you contact an insurance broker, and is it free? We have just done some quotes on price comparison websites but they tend to be quite limited in the information we can give. They cared about being within 100 metres of water, and a flood in the last 10 years. Would they already know about the potential flood risk? Do we have to call them up to let them know there was a flood over 25 years ago?

Thank you to everyone who has given their thoughts so fair! It has all been really helpful. I do like getting all the facts though, hence my a million and one questions 😂

Yes
just phone them
Quotes are free
At least I’ve never had to pay and we’ve even had them out to the house to check on it as we are listed.

I wouldn’t touch a house with any sort of flood risk and I say that as someone who previously owned a house that seriously flooded twice. It was a 1/100 year chance of flooding when we bought it and it happened twice in the space of 6 months. Has now been recategorised as a 1/3 year chance and has flooded three times more even since we left. So bear in mind, places can be recategorised. Each time it floods it breaks a new record in how high, last time the street flooded (last winter) the water was a foot higher than ever before. We obviously had to be very open about its history on selling, luckily someone bought it for cash to run as an Airbnb as it was in a tourist spot and a very pretty house. I feel so fortunate to be out and wouldn’t wish flooding on my worst enemy. We obviously sold it for less than if it hadn’t flooded but were fortunate not to lose too much as it was thought an unusual year. However after the subsequent three floods, it’s probably unsellable. Also Flood RE which allows flood risk properties to get insurance is due to come to an end in the next 10-15 years, responsibility is being handed back to insurance companies which probably means places will become uninsurable again. Also as more flooding occurs properties with any risk will be harder to sell. And that’s not even taking into account the stress and mental health impact. We became addicted to weather reports & nearby river levels. We couldn’t leave the house when heavy rain was forecast as we might have to move furniture upstairs which we did on several occasions even when we didn’t flood. It was a total living nightmare if I’m being honest. I had nightmares about flooding for a good year or so even after we left. We now live on a high ridge and not near any water. A very small stream can change in a very short time to a huge river so don’t underestimate any small water courses . It was a bit of an education and made me realise how naive we’d been buying that house although previously it didn’t have a flood history. Houses near rivers now make us both shudder.

Not really. Assuming it doesn't hit you; you can probably recover lots of your possessions from tree damage, whereas floods will mean they all have to be destroyed.