14 ms·

Houston homeowners unaware that reservoir neighbourhoods are designed to flood

193 points by Geekette 9y ago

yellow_postit 9y ago
Would any type of records search available to a homeowner prepurchase have turned up these floodplain maps?
- TallGuyShort 9y ago
  I agree they should be available, but it may not have made a difference. Most people don't read any records when purchasing a home or base such a decision on things like this. I've had flood plain maps included in my mortgage paperwork, but I've also had the other parties sit their being verbally impatient while I actually look through everything instead of just signing where they show me.
  - jordanb 9y ago
    Of course those other parties, at your closing, bear no risk themselves if you sign (regardless the contents of the papers) and stand to lose their commission if you don't.
    - TallGuyShort 9y ago
      Which is extra screwed up even from the respective employers' perspective. They're loaning me more than 10 times more money than I've ever borrowed. Several times my salary. My ability to take care of the house and honor the terms of my homeowners' insurance is the only thing protecting their investment. Don't they WANT me to take it really seriously and know what I'm committing to?
  - bonniemuffin 9y ago
    When I bought a house, my agent got me all the documentation a day or two ahead of time so I could read through it before the closing day. I can't imagine trying to read and sign that giant stack of papers while people are waiting on you.
  - jpindar 9y ago
    I've noticed that whenever you have to sign a contract or agreement of any kind. No one expects you to read it.
    - deelowe 9y ago
      You should read real estate contracts. They are often specific to the purchase.
      - KGIII 9y ago
        I read almost all contracts. I even skim EULAs. If I'm signing it, I've probably read it. It's something I recommend that everybody do.
  - deelowe 9y ago
    You should have reviewed the map during due diligence, not at closing. Closing is for checking that the terms of the deal are properly documented not for research.
    - TallGuyShort 9y ago
      Well I can tell you the map was not available prior to closing. I requested it and all documents. Town and County governments only referred me to the Metropolitan District, whose board cancelled meetings and ignored all attempts. Closing was the first time I saw anything. That's why I didn't feel bad making them wait.
      - deelowe 9y ago
        It's not the seller's fault the county is a pain in the ass. Again closing is not for due diligence. Even if you had found an issue, you would have lost your escrow. I would be pissed too if a buyer tried to find a reason to back out of a deal at closing. That's not what that's for and you could have cost them a ton of money if you had found an issue. [Edit] fyi the proper way to make the seller care about such things is to extend due diligence and let them know you'll need a flood map before you'll move forward on the deal.
        amigoingtodie 9y ago
        Parent is well within his rights. I would be pissed if I bought property that knowingly floods, but the seller's agent insists it is the responsibility of the buyer's agent to discover this. What if the buyer relied on the seller's agent? You believe the buyer is at fault?
        deelowe 9y ago
        I don't "think" it's the buyer's responsibility. It literally is their responsibility (excluding special circumstances). The large majority of contracts are written with the assumption that the buyer performs due diligence during a specific period. Once that period is up, there are penalties for backing out. The buyer is in violation of the contract if they back out of the offer. Rights have little to do with contract law in this case by the way. Note we're talking about public records such as flood plains here, not the seller lying on a disclosure form or some other form of fraud.
- pmorici 9y ago
  Ultimately the politicians knew and were politically pressured by the developers to not take any strong action. So because of this, according to this article, the only mention of flooding risk was in the plat documents which are a drawing of the lots which no one probably looks at unless they have a property line dispute with their neighbor.
- hydrogen18 9y ago
  When I bought my house in TX I had to explicitly go through a separate agreement with the mortgage defining what a flood plain was and how it could affect my property. I'm not even in a flood plain and had to learn about them. I guess if you buy cash you might not know, but in general it's in the documentation you get while purchasing a house here in TX.
  - alyandon 9y ago
    Yep, exact same experience here when I purchased my home in the Dallas area.
- bonniemuffin 9y ago
  The Harris county flood map shows Lakes on Eldridge, for example, as being outside the 100 year flood plain-- so if I was looking for information before buying a house in that neighborhood, I would've gotten as far as this and then felt reassured and stopped looking. http://www.harriscountyfemt.org/ http://www.harriscountyfemt.org/
  - mannykannot 9y ago
    Even if the map was realistic, the 100-year boundary is not the level beyond which the flood risk is too rare to care about. At that level, the expectation is that the house will be flooded at some point.
  - cat199 9y ago
    It floods here. period. If you live near these reservoirs, you drive by them daily or at least weekly, and see them turn into giant lakes after a mild storm (which for us can mean dropping several cm/in in the course of an hour or even minutes), and are also aware that we get big storms from time to time. Thinking you are not at risk of flooding anywhere in the area, or near these reservoirs especially, is basically living in denial.
  - asclepi 9y ago
    A quick check on Google Maps shows that right next to LOE is a road named "Addicks Dam Rd." That's a red flag. Zooming out on the satellite view reveals what certainly looks like a reservoir structure. More red flags. Googling "Addicks Dam" leads you to the Addicks Reservoir Wikipedia page which doesn't sound reassuring (even when you consider the pre-Harvey version of that page). Of course, hindsight is 20/20, but it doesn't seem like there was anything in the way of due diligence to avoid choosing this neighborhood. I certainly believe however that realtors and the local government said that everything was fine in pre-Harvey times, as both had something to lose with saying the opposite. That's why I never rely on those sources alone. There's a lot of additional information to be gained from Google Maps and OSM, satellite views, walking in the environment, checking historic news, talking with residents, etc. before settling on a neighborhood.
- deelowe 9y ago
  Yeah, the flood plain map... They are free and publicly available. Typically your county will be the one to ask, but they are available at the state and federal level as well.
- sbov 9y ago
  As others mentioned, you can get a flood plain map from several sources. However, some of them can be wrong. The federal map for our home is wrong and puts us in a flood plain. But that map was from before our development was built, which slightly relocated a creek. For whatever reason, our county refuses to submit their updated map. But the previous homeowner got a special note at the federal level saying it isn't in a flood plain.
- foolfoolz 9y ago
  in California it's required to give this information to buyers as part of disclosures, not sure about texas
  - topspin 9y ago
    California homeowners are dealing with some rather serious problems of their own at the moment. They're still counting bodies from the wildfires. However excellent the CA regulatory regime is it appears there is some work to do there as well.
    - sxates 9y ago
      I purchased a house last year in the Oakland Hills. I learned when I started calling around to secure insurance for it that it was in the "maximum wildfire risk zone", which meant none of the big national insurance companies will touch it - making it difficult to insure. And you can't get a mortgage without that insurance, so you have no excuse for not knowing the risks. In addition to that, the City of Oakland (and other cities in the area) have strict fire prevention ordinances for those who live in these high risk areas. You are required to maintain a defensible space around your house, to remove dead trees and shrubs, clean up dry leaves, keep grass short, remove tree limbs < 6' from the ground, etc etc. and the fire department comes by at least once a year to inspect your property to make sure you do it. If they find you in non-compliance they fine you $330 on the spot and schedule another inspection for a couple weeks later. Again, no excuse for not knowing your risks. Similar regulations are in place for utilities and businesses to reduce the risk. Seems to me California is doing a much better job dealing with natural disaster preparation, but there's only so much the state can reasonably do.
      - topspin 9y ago
        Based on aerial views of the burned out subdivisions the problem is zoning. The structures have almost no separation from each other; only 5-10' on average as seen in video from Santa Rosa[1]. In subdivisions where the fire spared some homes the line between the burned out properties and the survivors is often a street; a modest residential street provided enough separation to stop the fire. So CA and its various governments have been either allowing or requiring developers to plat large homes on tiny lots with next to no separation. Fed by wind the fire leapt from one home to the next burning out whole subdivisions. While the efforts you cite to control brush are admirable they can't prevent this; the houses are too tightly packed and will burn en-mass with no help from brush at all given enough wind. Bottom line; this is indeed a regulatory problem. Obviously that rankles those that habitually give CA every benefit of the doubt in all things but physics doesn't care. [1] http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Drone-footage-reveals-utter-devastation-to-Santa-12278094.php http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Drone-footage-reveals-utt...
monort 9y ago
Is there a service to show the map of insurance premiums for different disaster types?
- sverige 9y ago
  Historical loss data is definitely collected by insurance companies for analysis by their underwriters. Sometimes they share that information with each other. For example, some limited loss data is shared among companies for auto claim information associated with auto policy holders. (Not all companies participate. GEICO is the biggest holdout, last I knew.) I have not heard that companies share property damage loss information with each other, but they may do so the same way they share auto claim information. On the other hand, not sharing may give them a competitive advantage. For example, Allstate systematically reduced their coverage of coastal homes in the New Jersey / New York markets about 10 years ago, because their threat models indicated that the area was due for a major hurricane. This obviously reduced their losses when Hurricane Sandy hit. Katrina got all of the big insurers to take a closer look at their exposures from hurricanes, and I would not be surprised to learn that premiums for coastal properties all along the East Coast and Gulf Coast have skyrocketed in the last decade. The risk is very high. They enjoyed over 10 years of low losses, but then this year they got hammered in Texas and Florida. So, would companies share detailed information with each other? Probably not, but they probably have a good idea of what their competitors have paid out for major events, and they definitely know where the risks are geographically. Are they going to share that detailed information with the public? Hell no. They bought it, they paid for it, it's theirs, and they're going to keep it. The easiest way to determine if there's a high risk is to ask for a quote on a property before you buy it. That will tell you a lot. For example, if you're thinking of buying some property in southern California and wonder if the fire risk is high, just ask for a quote. If wildfire risk is high, Allstate (for example) will simply tell you they can't write a policy for that property. Other companies may write a policy, but the premium will be higher than surrounding areas with lower risk. Flood insurance is a special case. No homeowners policy offers coverage for flooding, because it is the textbook example for adverse selection in property and casualty insurance. (That is, only people who live in a flood plain will buy flood insurance, so the risk is not spread across a large enough population. Fire, on the other hand, can happen anywhere, so everyone buys coverage.) For this reason, the government offers flood insurance for those who live in flood plains. Interestingly enough, even then not many people buy the coverage. Edit: Earthquakes are another example of adverse selection. If you live in California and have investigated premiums for earthquake coverage, you already know this. No, it is not covered by your homeowners policy. No, I don't want to pay for it when it happens, because I live in an area with extremely low risk for earthquakes (and flooding). And yet, when it happens, I will surely be paying more taxes to cover someone else's losses.
stevetodd 9y ago
If you want to look at flood information for most places in the US, go here: https://msc.fema.gov/portal/search https://msc.fema.gov/portal/search
- revmoo 9y ago
  A lot of those maps are outdated or purposely inaccurate due to local politics. Your best bet when buying a home is to look at actual topographical maps and understanding how water will flow through the actual geography.
- dawnerd 9y ago
  Last two homes I’ve purchased have had this info as part of the escrow/mortgage docs. I bet most people don’t bother to actually read that hide stack of paper they’re signing.
  - toast0 9y ago
    Most of the stack (when I closed) was a mortgage contract which was marked up as a uniform contract, plus what must have been one page per year of the finances for each payment. I double checked some key terms, but mostly relied on it being a uniform contract. Everything else was short and readable, but there were a lot of them.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
conductr 9y ago
I grew up in this area. I can confirm it’s not common knowledge how these dams work. I learned a lot seeing Harvey. Everyone does know the dams are there. But in an otherwise flat city they are just big mounds of dirt running for miles. They don’t hold water most of the time. Even with heavy rain any minor flooding goes away in a couple days. I never really understood why a 20-50 foot tall dam was needed. I remember once joking with a friend that if the water ever filled up over the dam that means the entire state of Texas behind the dams is under water. It actually did not make sense to me why they built the dams so big until Harvey. In any case, someone knew and should have been a required disclosure when buying a home. However, I don’t think it would have helped. People would have bought there anyway because this kind of flooding was unthinkable. Although they would have known they needed flood insurance. But then, insurance companies probably wouldn’t offer it.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- math_and_stuff 9y ago
  I grew up in Bear Creek (and went to school at Mayde Creek) and didn't know either.
  - cat199 9y ago
    htx here too.. But growing up in the area did either of you really think that a flood was not possible? floodplain or not, after seeing 1 rainstorm here it should be clear to anyone that flooding can happen if you're under the wrong cloud at the wrong time..
    - math_and_stuff 9y ago
      I wasn't a home buyer and am pretty sure I would have done this research if I had been. But, the point is that people that grew up here didn't have this as common knowledge; in hindsight, yes, but it's almost beyond the pale that the city would knowingly allow homes to be built in a known flood zone.
cmiles74 9y ago
“I don’t want to stay in this community,” he said. “I have to go far away from these reservoirs.” The value of the property will drop and people will move right back in. Reading the article it sounds like the city and county still aren't willing to take any real action to move housing out of the flood reservoir. I wonder what will make City officials take a wider view. As long as short term gain is the largest deciding factor, we can expect more such tragedies.
- cat199 9y ago
  if you've never been here during a rainstorm, this all sounds doable. After you've seen a heavy one, you realise flooding is a fact of life.. really, what people should do is just start building houses on stilts like they do in coastal areas or similar, because sooner or later, it will flood here.
- nerdponx 9y ago
  Usually we say "something will only change after a tragedy." If this hurricane wasn't enough, then perhaps nothing is.
- goalieca 9y ago
  There are two solutions here. Either "let the market decide" or "regulate".
  - norikki 9y ago
    Except "let the market decide" usually means let greedy developers profit by outsourcing the cost of massive and costly public rescue missions and flood control infrastructure. Why shouldn't the developers or homeowners have to pay a special fee to offset the additional stress their driveways are putting on the dam and the cost of rescuing them if it floods?
- mannykannot 9y ago
  So long as the federal government is effectively underwriting a chunk of the risk, the situation is likely to continue.
mafsedan 9y ago
I've bought "real property" three time in my life. Each time, despite the "realtors" complaints, I hired an attorney to look over the deal and to be at closing. And each time, he noticed things that the "realtor" didn't know about (or pretended not to know about). Realtors are not legal experts. They are mostly part-timers who passed a test. Don't rely on them.
mabbo 9y ago
In Ontario, you simply are not allowed to build in a flood plain. This is in response to Hurricane Hazel in the 1950s, who's floods killed people. Even further, if your home is destroyed in a major flood, you aren't allowed to rebuild it- clearly, wherever you are it's not safe from flooding. It's a very effective system. The only problems is has these days are A: people who fight it because they bought property they want to develop, but can't, and B: the fact that where flooding occurs is changing due to climate change and geology/geography changes in the last 50 years. Texas may want to consider such a system.
- scarface74 9y ago
  That will never happen in Texas. The minute that someone tries to make a law, people will start yelling about “big government” and “freedom”. From the article: “This is not dumb, bad planning,this is very well-thought-out, bad planning.””
  - norikki 9y ago
    Well at least you didn't blame Trump for it.
  - mcguire 9y ago
    As the article alluded to, Texans have had issues with government "taking" property indirectly since the early '90s, at least.
    - scarface74 9y ago
      So people should be given a choice - either accept a government set amount to buy up your property and to help you relocate or pay for your own repairs. Why should other people keep paying to rebuild homes in flood plains?
      - KekDemaga 9y ago
        Flood insurance can be revoked in the way you describe but it is a federal matter not a Texas one.
tzs 9y ago
Texas is a non-recourse state [1]. In a non-recourse state if you default on your mortgage the lender cannot come after you personally for the remaining balance. All they can do is foreclose and then sell the house. If what they get from the sale is less than what you owed, the lender eats the difference. I would have expected the mortgage companies to have been on top of this, either not lending for homes in that area or requiring the borrowers to have flood insurance. [1] along with Alaska, Arizona, California, Connecticut, Idaho, Minnesota, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oregon, Utah, and Washington.
- smaddox 9y ago
  I assume the vast majority of the loans were bundled into mortgage backed securities, and then pawned off to various pension funds.
- harikb 9y ago
  From what I have heard, non-recourse (in CA) only applies to original purchase loans. Once you refinance, which most people do as rates change, it does not apply. Not that this distinction makes much of a difference - most people want to believe their land is still worth millions.
- alasdair_ 9y ago
  >In a non-recourse state if you default on your mortgage the lender cannot come after you personally for the remaining balance. Sort of. There are lots of caveats (taking out a second mortgage removes some of this protection, for example). Also, in Washington, at least, this is only true if the lender opts to handle it this way. They get a simplified process if it's non-recourse but if they know you have lots of other assets, then absolutely CAN take you to court for the difference, it's just far more costly and they can't use the simplified procedure.
- jonknee 9y ago
  Probably because they knew the Feds would never allow so many people to lose their homes. It's sort of like the fabled "Greenspan put" [1], if something bad happens you can count on Uncle Sam to pump things back up. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenspan_put https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenspan_put
mmagin 9y ago
Isn't Houston famous for having basically no zoning laws, at least compared to most developed parts of the US?
- adolph 9y ago
  It lacks what most people consider zoning, although the various jurisdictions making up Houston all have various land use regulations and most neighborhoods have deed restrictions.
- rurban 9y ago
  Yes, it's unique even worldwide, and every city planning student learns about it. There are few minor exceptions, but basically everybody can do what he wants and neighbors are fighting each other without the help of city officials. And you wouldn't trust those officials anyway.
- stevenwoo 9y ago
  Another problem is Houston is in Harris County and the land to the north and the west that contributes to flooding the Buffalo Bayou route to the ocean are in different counties and multiple different municipalities. This would require the different government entities to cooperate on a solution that limits each others development. The state government is fairly dysfunctional in this area and raising money to fund anything by raising taxes does not look likely for the forseeable future - their solution so far to fund public schools is to cut taxes which force them to unfund them a little bit more each year, leading to ubiquitous fund raisers by parents for their local schools.
dmitriid 9y ago
> Some local government officials, like Harris County Commissioner Steve Radack, say they’ve warned residents for years about the risks of living in or around the reservoirs during town halls and other public events. Wait. Isn't the job of government officials to not issue building permits in the first place? > Several local officials — including Houston’s “flood czar” and a neighboring county executive — said they had no idea the neighborhoods had been built inside the flood pools. Several real estate agents said they didn’t realize they were selling homes inside the pools. Yeah, right.
rayiner 9y ago
This is a really stark example of the chasm between politics and engineering, and why the latter often finds the former incomprehensible and distasteful. The engineers did their jobs. The politicians and the public didn’t understand it, or didn’t care, and disaster ensued.
olivermarks 9y ago
There is great pressure to build on designated flood plains all over the western world as population density increases. Rules are changed to enable building after there are a couple of decades of people 'forgetting' the geographic realities. You could make a case that the terrible northern california wildfires in Sonoma county are a variation on this theme. Virtually identical huge fires happened in 1964, when there was far less building and population. http://www.sfchronicle.com/thetake/article/Wine-Country-fire-of-1964-Eerie-similarities-to-12267643.php http://www.sfchronicle.com/thetake/article/Wine-Country-fire... People forget, subdivisions are built, and people assume someone somewhere did their due dilligence and that it is 'safe' land...
- olivermarks 9y ago
  http://www.pressdemocrat.com/news/7534368-181/santa-rosas-devastated-coffey-park?gallery=7515439&artslide=8 http://www.pressdemocrat.com/news/7534368-181/santa-rosas-de... "Surprising as it was to residents, the destruction of Coffey Park wasn’t a mystery to fire scientists. They view it as a rare, but predictable, event that has exposed flaws in the way fire risk is measured and mitigated in California. Because it was outside the officially mapped “very severe” hazard zone, more than five miles to the east, Coffey Park was exempt from regulations designed to make buildings fire resistant in high-risk areas. California fire officials developed hazard maps in the 2000s that for the first time, tied building codes to geographies based on risk. Max Moritz, a fire specialist with the University of California’s Cooperative Extension, said the maps were an important step forward in assessing fire danger. But the Coffey Park catastrophe has shown that the methodology, and the law underlying it, were too narrow."
gumby 9y ago
I love that the responsible state and county officials blame congress,and that the article lets them get away with it. They should blame Californians and jihadis while they are at it. How’s that elimination of “job-killing regulation” working for ya? Things like this are the point of local government.
- zanny 9y ago
  The Houston situation is as much the fault of regulation as its the fault of not having some. Houston itself was only built up to the degree it was on the backs of federally subsidized flood insurance and huge amounts of public money spent to build the dams around it. If developers had to eat the real cost of building in a flood zone, many fewer would have done so.
calimac 9y ago
Every homeowner was advised of and signed disclosures to the effect that they were buying a house in a FLOOD ZONE/ flood control dam. Every licensed real estate agent and licensed insurance agent is tested on knowledge of this. How can a reporter write something so stupid? It depicts homeowners as illiterate elementary school children who have been victimized by the big bad developers. This is an example of how truly simple the media, journalists, and public officials have become. There is no honor in being a logical responsible thinking individual in a post 2008 America.
timthelion 9y ago
There used to be big green feilds where people would fly their kites along the river in the Karlín neighborhood of Prague. The feilds were privately owned, but it was illegal to build on them, because they were seasonal flood grounds. Now, new and very fancy offices and appartments are being built there, despite the fact that we often have over a meter of floodwater there. I have no idea what changed. In the same neighborhood is an old rotting building called the Invalidovna [1], which was partly destroyed by flooding. It is about 200 meters from the shore of the river. Everything closer will be flooded even worse. This is an issue that is of great interest to me in the analysis of property rights. When the old building code was in effect, privately owned land was turned into a defacto public park. No one wanted the city to lose that park, but the private property was owned. Doesn't the owner have the right to do with their land as they please? But really, it is in the interest of no one except the owner that the owner should build there. Even the people who buy the appartments are getting screwed in a way. And what is the fairness of declaring the land a flood plane in the first place. People owned that land before it was declared a flood plane. The government, with the stroke of a pen makes land worthless or worth millions. It is just one of those great examples of how capitalism is chaotic, unjust, and senseless and why we should never assume that someone deserves to be rich and others deserve to be poor. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invalidovna https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invalidovna
- rsync 9y ago
  "No one wanted the city to lose that park, but the private property was owned. Doesn't the owner have the right to do with their land as they please? But really, it is in the interest of no one except the owner that the owner should build there. Even the people who buy the appartments are getting screwed in a way." I think this is easily solved by requiring the owner to post a bond that approximates the future risk exposure that public entities (like FEMA, the National Guard, state police, etc.) face due to the new buildings now in place. That and, of course, full disclosure in sales literature/contracts. In this way the private property owner exercises their right to dispose of their property as they see fit but the general public is not shouldering a public cost.
- syrrim 9y ago
moomin 9y ago
An aside: I'm getting tired of hearing people talk about "unique events". We've had a lot of them recently. Maybe in future the weather is going to follow a different path from that which prevailed in the last century.
avyfain 9y ago
There is a great Planet Money episode[0] on the problems behind government insurance/subsidy of flood neighborhoods in Houston. Worth listening to. [0] http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2017/09/29/554603161/episode-797-flood-money http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2017/09/29/554603161/episo...
iaw 9y ago
> He said he still considers it a “unique event” and doesn’t think it’s likely those homes will flood again any time soon. Of all the things that came across in this article as disastrous this really caught me. This event wasn't "unique," something similar happened nearly 30 years ago. The question that needs to be asked is: when will this happen again?
Dowwie 9y ago
Lenders would know about the flood zone and act accordingly. Something is wrong with this story..

193 points by Geekette 9y ago

yellow_postit 9y ago

Would any type of records search available to a homeowner prepurchase have turned up these floodplain maps?

TallGuyShort 9y ago
I agree they should be available, but it may not have made a difference. Most people don't read any records when purchasing a home or base such a decision on things like this. I've had flood plain maps included in my mortgage paperwork, but I've also had the other parties sit their being verbally impatient while I actually look through everything instead of just signing where they show me.
- jordanb 9y ago
  Of course those other parties, at your closing, bear no risk themselves if you sign (regardless the contents of the papers) and stand to lose their commission if you don't.
  - TallGuyShort 9y ago
    Which is extra screwed up even from the respective employers' perspective. They're loaning me more than 10 times more money than I've ever borrowed. Several times my salary. My ability to take care of the house and honor the terms of my homeowners' insurance is the only thing protecting their investment. Don't they WANT me to take it really seriously and know what I'm committing to?
- bonniemuffin 9y ago
  When I bought a house, my agent got me all the documentation a day or two ahead of time so I could read through it before the closing day. I can't imagine trying to read and sign that giant stack of papers while people are waiting on you.
- jpindar 9y ago
  I've noticed that whenever you have to sign a contract or agreement of any kind. No one expects you to read it.
  - deelowe 9y ago
    You should read real estate contracts. They are often specific to the purchase.
    - KGIII 9y ago
      I read almost all contracts. I even skim EULAs. If I'm signing it, I've probably read it. It's something I recommend that everybody do.
- deelowe 9y ago
  You should have reviewed the map during due diligence, not at closing. Closing is for checking that the terms of the deal are properly documented not for research.
  - TallGuyShort 9y ago
    Well I can tell you the map was not available prior to closing. I requested it and all documents. Town and County governments only referred me to the Metropolitan District, whose board cancelled meetings and ignored all attempts. Closing was the first time I saw anything. That's why I didn't feel bad making them wait.
    - deelowe 9y ago
      It's not the seller's fault the county is a pain in the ass. Again closing is not for due diligence. Even if you had found an issue, you would have lost your escrow. I would be pissed too if a buyer tried to find a reason to back out of a deal at closing. That's not what that's for and you could have cost them a ton of money if you had found an issue. [Edit] fyi the proper way to make the seller care about such things is to extend due diligence and let them know you'll need a flood map before you'll move forward on the deal.
      - amigoingtodie 9y ago
        Parent is well within his rights. I would be pissed if I bought property that knowingly floods, but the seller's agent insists it is the responsibility of the buyer's agent to discover this. What if the buyer relied on the seller's agent? You believe the buyer is at fault?
        deelowe 9y ago
        I don't "think" it's the buyer's responsibility. It literally is their responsibility (excluding special circumstances). The large majority of contracts are written with the assumption that the buyer performs due diligence during a specific period. Once that period is up, there are penalties for backing out. The buyer is in violation of the contract if they back out of the offer. Rights have little to do with contract law in this case by the way. Note we're talking about public records such as flood plains here, not the seller lying on a disclosure form or some other form of fraud.
pmorici 9y ago
Ultimately the politicians knew and were politically pressured by the developers to not take any strong action. So because of this, according to this article, the only mention of flooding risk was in the plat documents which are a drawing of the lots which no one probably looks at unless they have a property line dispute with their neighbor.
hydrogen18 9y ago
When I bought my house in TX I had to explicitly go through a separate agreement with the mortgage defining what a flood plain was and how it could affect my property. I'm not even in a flood plain and had to learn about them. I guess if you buy cash you might not know, but in general it's in the documentation you get while purchasing a house here in TX.
- alyandon 9y ago
  Yep, exact same experience here when I purchased my home in the Dallas area.
bonniemuffin 9y ago
The Harris county flood map shows Lakes on Eldridge, for example, as being outside the 100 year flood plain-- so if I was looking for information before buying a house in that neighborhood, I would've gotten as far as this and then felt reassured and stopped looking. http://www.harriscountyfemt.org/ http://www.harriscountyfemt.org/
- mannykannot 9y ago
  Even if the map was realistic, the 100-year boundary is not the level beyond which the flood risk is too rare to care about. At that level, the expectation is that the house will be flooded at some point.
- cat199 9y ago
  It floods here. period. If you live near these reservoirs, you drive by them daily or at least weekly, and see them turn into giant lakes after a mild storm (which for us can mean dropping several cm/in in the course of an hour or even minutes), and are also aware that we get big storms from time to time. Thinking you are not at risk of flooding anywhere in the area, or near these reservoirs especially, is basically living in denial.
- asclepi 9y ago
  A quick check on Google Maps shows that right next to LOE is a road named "Addicks Dam Rd." That's a red flag. Zooming out on the satellite view reveals what certainly looks like a reservoir structure. More red flags. Googling "Addicks Dam" leads you to the Addicks Reservoir Wikipedia page which doesn't sound reassuring (even when you consider the pre-Harvey version of that page). Of course, hindsight is 20/20, but it doesn't seem like there was anything in the way of due diligence to avoid choosing this neighborhood. I certainly believe however that realtors and the local government said that everything was fine in pre-Harvey times, as both had something to lose with saying the opposite. That's why I never rely on those sources alone. There's a lot of additional information to be gained from Google Maps and OSM, satellite views, walking in the environment, checking historic news, talking with residents, etc. before settling on a neighborhood.
deelowe 9y ago
Yeah, the flood plain map... They are free and publicly available. Typically your county will be the one to ask, but they are available at the state and federal level as well.
sbov 9y ago
As others mentioned, you can get a flood plain map from several sources. However, some of them can be wrong. The federal map for our home is wrong and puts us in a flood plain. But that map was from before our development was built, which slightly relocated a creek. For whatever reason, our county refuses to submit their updated map. But the previous homeowner got a special note at the federal level saying it isn't in a flood plain.
foolfoolz 9y ago
in California it's required to give this information to buyers as part of disclosures, not sure about texas
- topspin 9y ago
  California homeowners are dealing with some rather serious problems of their own at the moment. They're still counting bodies from the wildfires. However excellent the CA regulatory regime is it appears there is some work to do there as well.
  - sxates 9y ago
    I purchased a house last year in the Oakland Hills. I learned when I started calling around to secure insurance for it that it was in the "maximum wildfire risk zone", which meant none of the big national insurance companies will touch it - making it difficult to insure. And you can't get a mortgage without that insurance, so you have no excuse for not knowing the risks. In addition to that, the City of Oakland (and other cities in the area) have strict fire prevention ordinances for those who live in these high risk areas. You are required to maintain a defensible space around your house, to remove dead trees and shrubs, clean up dry leaves, keep grass short, remove tree limbs < 6' from the ground, etc etc. and the fire department comes by at least once a year to inspect your property to make sure you do it. If they find you in non-compliance they fine you $330 on the spot and schedule another inspection for a couple weeks later. Again, no excuse for not knowing your risks. Similar regulations are in place for utilities and businesses to reduce the risk. Seems to me California is doing a much better job dealing with natural disaster preparation, but there's only so much the state can reasonably do.
    - topspin 9y ago
      Based on aerial views of the burned out subdivisions the problem is zoning. The structures have almost no separation from each other; only 5-10' on average as seen in video from Santa Rosa[1]. In subdivisions where the fire spared some homes the line between the burned out properties and the survivors is often a street; a modest residential street provided enough separation to stop the fire. So CA and its various governments have been either allowing or requiring developers to plat large homes on tiny lots with next to no separation. Fed by wind the fire leapt from one home to the next burning out whole subdivisions. While the efforts you cite to control brush are admirable they can't prevent this; the houses are too tightly packed and will burn en-mass with no help from brush at all given enough wind. Bottom line; this is indeed a regulatory problem. Obviously that rankles those that habitually give CA every benefit of the doubt in all things but physics doesn't care. [1] http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Drone-footage-reveals-utter-devastation-to-Santa-12278094.php http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Drone-footage-reveals-utt...

monort 9y ago

Is there a service to show the map of insurance premiums for different disaster types?

sverige 9y ago
Historical loss data is definitely collected by insurance companies for analysis by their underwriters. Sometimes they share that information with each other. For example, some limited loss data is shared among companies for auto claim information associated with auto policy holders. (Not all companies participate. GEICO is the biggest holdout, last I knew.) I have not heard that companies share property damage loss information with each other, but they may do so the same way they share auto claim information. On the other hand, not sharing may give them a competitive advantage. For example, Allstate systematically reduced their coverage of coastal homes in the New Jersey / New York markets about 10 years ago, because their threat models indicated that the area was due for a major hurricane. This obviously reduced their losses when Hurricane Sandy hit. Katrina got all of the big insurers to take a closer look at their exposures from hurricanes, and I would not be surprised to learn that premiums for coastal properties all along the East Coast and Gulf Coast have skyrocketed in the last decade. The risk is very high. They enjoyed over 10 years of low losses, but then this year they got hammered in Texas and Florida. So, would companies share detailed information with each other? Probably not, but they probably have a good idea of what their competitors have paid out for major events, and they definitely know where the risks are geographically. Are they going to share that detailed information with the public? Hell no. They bought it, they paid for it, it's theirs, and they're going to keep it. The easiest way to determine if there's a high risk is to ask for a quote on a property before you buy it. That will tell you a lot. For example, if you're thinking of buying some property in southern California and wonder if the fire risk is high, just ask for a quote. If wildfire risk is high, Allstate (for example) will simply tell you they can't write a policy for that property. Other companies may write a policy, but the premium will be higher than surrounding areas with lower risk. Flood insurance is a special case. No homeowners policy offers coverage for flooding, because it is the textbook example for adverse selection in property and casualty insurance. (That is, only people who live in a flood plain will buy flood insurance, so the risk is not spread across a large enough population. Fire, on the other hand, can happen anywhere, so everyone buys coverage.) For this reason, the government offers flood insurance for those who live in flood plains. Interestingly enough, even then not many people buy the coverage. Edit: Earthquakes are another example of adverse selection. If you live in California and have investigated premiums for earthquake coverage, you already know this. No, it is not covered by your homeowners policy. No, I don't want to pay for it when it happens, because I live in an area with extremely low risk for earthquakes (and flooding). And yet, when it happens, I will surely be paying more taxes to cover someone else's losses.

stevetodd 9y ago

If you want to look at flood information for most places in the US, go here: https://msc.fema.gov/portal/search https://msc.fema.gov/portal/search

revmoo 9y ago
A lot of those maps are outdated or purposely inaccurate due to local politics. Your best bet when buying a home is to look at actual topographical maps and understanding how water will flow through the actual geography.
dawnerd 9y ago
Last two homes I’ve purchased have had this info as part of the escrow/mortgage docs. I bet most people don’t bother to actually read that hide stack of paper they’re signing.
- toast0 9y ago
  Most of the stack (when I closed) was a mortgage contract which was marked up as a uniform contract, plus what must have been one page per year of the finances for each payment. I double checked some key terms, but mostly relied on it being a uniform contract. Everything else was short and readable, but there were a lot of them.

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conductr 9y ago

I grew up in this area. I can confirm it’s not common knowledge how these dams work. I learned a lot seeing Harvey. Everyone does know the dams are there. But in an otherwise flat city they are just big mounds of dirt running for miles. They don’t hold water most of the time. Even with heavy rain any minor flooding goes away in a couple days. I never really understood why a 20-50 foot tall dam was needed. I remember once joking with a friend that if the water ever filled up over the dam that means the entire state of Texas behind the dams is under water. It actually did not make sense to me why they built the dams so big until Harvey. In any case, someone knew and should have been a required disclosure when buying a home. However, I don’t think it would have helped. People would have bought there anyway because this kind of flooding was unthinkable. Although they would have known they needed flood insurance. But then, insurance companies probably wouldn’t offer it.

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math_and_stuff 9y ago
I grew up in Bear Creek (and went to school at Mayde Creek) and didn't know either.
- cat199 9y ago
  htx here too.. But growing up in the area did either of you really think that a flood was not possible? floodplain or not, after seeing 1 rainstorm here it should be clear to anyone that flooding can happen if you're under the wrong cloud at the wrong time..
  - math_and_stuff 9y ago
    I wasn't a home buyer and am pretty sure I would have done this research if I had been. But, the point is that people that grew up here didn't have this as common knowledge; in hindsight, yes, but it's almost beyond the pale that the city would knowingly allow homes to be built in a known flood zone.

cmiles74 9y ago

“I don’t want to stay in this community,” he said. “I have to go far away from these reservoirs.” The value of the property will drop and people will move right back in. Reading the article it sounds like the city and county still aren't willing to take any real action to move housing out of the flood reservoir. I wonder what will make City officials take a wider view. As long as short term gain is the largest deciding factor, we can expect more such tragedies.

cat199 9y ago
if you've never been here during a rainstorm, this all sounds doable. After you've seen a heavy one, you realise flooding is a fact of life.. really, what people should do is just start building houses on stilts like they do in coastal areas or similar, because sooner or later, it will flood here.
nerdponx 9y ago
Usually we say "something will only change after a tragedy." If this hurricane wasn't enough, then perhaps nothing is.
goalieca 9y ago
There are two solutions here. Either "let the market decide" or "regulate".
- norikki 9y ago
  Except "let the market decide" usually means let greedy developers profit by outsourcing the cost of massive and costly public rescue missions and flood control infrastructure. Why shouldn't the developers or homeowners have to pay a special fee to offset the additional stress their driveways are putting on the dam and the cost of rescuing them if it floods?
mannykannot 9y ago
So long as the federal government is effectively underwriting a chunk of the risk, the situation is likely to continue.

mafsedan 9y ago

I've bought "real property" three time in my life. Each time, despite the "realtors" complaints, I hired an attorney to look over the deal and to be at closing. And each time, he noticed things that the "realtor" didn't know about (or pretended not to know about). Realtors are not legal experts. They are mostly part-timers who passed a test. Don't rely on them.

mabbo 9y ago

In Ontario, you simply are not allowed to build in a flood plain. This is in response to Hurricane Hazel in the 1950s, who's floods killed people. Even further, if your home is destroyed in a major flood, you aren't allowed to rebuild it- clearly, wherever you are it's not safe from flooding. It's a very effective system. The only problems is has these days are A: people who fight it because they bought property they want to develop, but can't, and B: the fact that where flooding occurs is changing due to climate change and geology/geography changes in the last 50 years. Texas may want to consider such a system.

scarface74 9y ago
That will never happen in Texas. The minute that someone tries to make a law, people will start yelling about “big government” and “freedom”. From the article: “This is not dumb, bad planning,this is very well-thought-out, bad planning.””
- norikki 9y ago
  Well at least you didn't blame Trump for it.
- mcguire 9y ago
  As the article alluded to, Texans have had issues with government "taking" property indirectly since the early '90s, at least.
  - scarface74 9y ago
    So people should be given a choice - either accept a government set amount to buy up your property and to help you relocate or pay for your own repairs. Why should other people keep paying to rebuild homes in flood plains?
    - KekDemaga 9y ago
      Flood insurance can be revoked in the way you describe but it is a federal matter not a Texas one.

tzs 9y ago

Texas is a non-recourse state [1]. In a non-recourse state if you default on your mortgage the lender cannot come after you personally for the remaining balance. All they can do is foreclose and then sell the house. If what they get from the sale is less than what you owed, the lender eats the difference. I would have expected the mortgage companies to have been on top of this, either not lending for homes in that area or requiring the borrowers to have flood insurance. [1] along with Alaska, Arizona, California, Connecticut, Idaho, Minnesota, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oregon, Utah, and Washington.

smaddox 9y ago
I assume the vast majority of the loans were bundled into mortgage backed securities, and then pawned off to various pension funds.
harikb 9y ago
From what I have heard, non-recourse (in CA) only applies to original purchase loans. Once you refinance, which most people do as rates change, it does not apply. Not that this distinction makes much of a difference - most people want to believe their land is still worth millions.
alasdair_ 9y ago
>In a non-recourse state if you default on your mortgage the lender cannot come after you personally for the remaining balance. Sort of. There are lots of caveats (taking out a second mortgage removes some of this protection, for example). Also, in Washington, at least, this is only true if the lender opts to handle it this way. They get a simplified process if it's non-recourse but if they know you have lots of other assets, then absolutely CAN take you to court for the difference, it's just far more costly and they can't use the simplified procedure.
jonknee 9y ago
Probably because they knew the Feds would never allow so many people to lose their homes. It's sort of like the fabled "Greenspan put" [1], if something bad happens you can count on Uncle Sam to pump things back up. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenspan_put https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenspan_put

mmagin 9y ago

Isn't Houston famous for having basically no zoning laws, at least compared to most developed parts of the US?

adolph 9y ago
It lacks what most people consider zoning, although the various jurisdictions making up Houston all have various land use regulations and most neighborhoods have deed restrictions.
rurban 9y ago
Yes, it's unique even worldwide, and every city planning student learns about it. There are few minor exceptions, but basically everybody can do what he wants and neighbors are fighting each other without the help of city officials. And you wouldn't trust those officials anyway.
stevenwoo 9y ago
Another problem is Houston is in Harris County and the land to the north and the west that contributes to flooding the Buffalo Bayou route to the ocean are in different counties and multiple different municipalities. This would require the different government entities to cooperate on a solution that limits each others development. The state government is fairly dysfunctional in this area and raising money to fund anything by raising taxes does not look likely for the forseeable future - their solution so far to fund public schools is to cut taxes which force them to unfund them a little bit more each year, leading to ubiquitous fund raisers by parents for their local schools.

dmitriid 9y ago

> Some local government officials, like Harris County Commissioner Steve Radack, say they’ve warned residents for years about the risks of living in or around the reservoirs during town halls and other public events. Wait. Isn't the job of government officials to not issue building permits in the first place? > Several local officials — including Houston’s “flood czar” and a neighboring county executive — said they had no idea the neighborhoods had been built inside the flood pools. Several real estate agents said they didn’t realize they were selling homes inside the pools. Yeah, right.

rayiner 9y ago

This is a really stark example of the chasm between politics and engineering, and why the latter often finds the former incomprehensible and distasteful. The engineers did their jobs. The politicians and the public didn’t understand it, or didn’t care, and disaster ensued.

olivermarks 9y ago

There is great pressure to build on designated flood plains all over the western world as population density increases. Rules are changed to enable building after there are a couple of decades of people 'forgetting' the geographic realities. You could make a case that the terrible northern california wildfires in Sonoma county are a variation on this theme. Virtually identical huge fires happened in 1964, when there was far less building and population. http://www.sfchronicle.com/thetake/article/Wine-Country-fire-of-1964-Eerie-similarities-to-12267643.php http://www.sfchronicle.com/thetake/article/Wine-Country-fire... People forget, subdivisions are built, and people assume someone somewhere did their due dilligence and that it is 'safe' land...

olivermarks 9y ago
http://www.pressdemocrat.com/news/7534368-181/santa-rosas-devastated-coffey-park?gallery=7515439&artslide=8 http://www.pressdemocrat.com/news/7534368-181/santa-rosas-de... "Surprising as it was to residents, the destruction of Coffey Park wasn’t a mystery to fire scientists. They view it as a rare, but predictable, event that has exposed flaws in the way fire risk is measured and mitigated in California. Because it was outside the officially mapped “very severe” hazard zone, more than five miles to the east, Coffey Park was exempt from regulations designed to make buildings fire resistant in high-risk areas. California fire officials developed hazard maps in the 2000s that for the first time, tied building codes to geographies based on risk. Max Moritz, a fire specialist with the University of California’s Cooperative Extension, said the maps were an important step forward in assessing fire danger. But the Coffey Park catastrophe has shown that the methodology, and the law underlying it, were too narrow."

gumby 9y ago

I love that the responsible state and county officials blame congress,and that the article lets them get away with it. They should blame Californians and jihadis while they are at it. How’s that elimination of “job-killing regulation” working for ya? Things like this are the point of local government.

zanny 9y ago
The Houston situation is as much the fault of regulation as its the fault of not having some. Houston itself was only built up to the degree it was on the backs of federally subsidized flood insurance and huge amounts of public money spent to build the dams around it. If developers had to eat the real cost of building in a flood zone, many fewer would have done so.

calimac 9y ago

Every homeowner was advised of and signed disclosures to the effect that they were buying a house in a FLOOD ZONE/ flood control dam. Every licensed real estate agent and licensed insurance agent is tested on knowledge of this. How can a reporter write something so stupid? It depicts homeowners as illiterate elementary school children who have been victimized by the big bad developers. This is an example of how truly simple the media, journalists, and public officials have become. There is no honor in being a logical responsible thinking individual in a post 2008 America.

timthelion 9y ago

There used to be big green feilds where people would fly their kites along the river in the Karlín neighborhood of Prague. The feilds were privately owned, but it was illegal to build on them, because they were seasonal flood grounds. Now, new and very fancy offices and appartments are being built there, despite the fact that we often have over a meter of floodwater there. I have no idea what changed. In the same neighborhood is an old rotting building called the Invalidovna [1], which was partly destroyed by flooding. It is about 200 meters from the shore of the river. Everything closer will be flooded even worse. This is an issue that is of great interest to me in the analysis of property rights. When the old building code was in effect, privately owned land was turned into a defacto public park. No one wanted the city to lose that park, but the private property was owned. Doesn't the owner have the right to do with their land as they please? But really, it is in the interest of no one except the owner that the owner should build there. Even the people who buy the appartments are getting screwed in a way. And what is the fairness of declaring the land a flood plane in the first place. People owned that land before it was declared a flood plane. The government, with the stroke of a pen makes land worthless or worth millions. It is just one of those great examples of how capitalism is chaotic, unjust, and senseless and why we should never assume that someone deserves to be rich and others deserve to be poor. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invalidovna https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invalidovna

rsync 9y ago
"No one wanted the city to lose that park, but the private property was owned. Doesn't the owner have the right to do with their land as they please? But really, it is in the interest of no one except the owner that the owner should build there. Even the people who buy the appartments are getting screwed in a way." I think this is easily solved by requiring the owner to post a bond that approximates the future risk exposure that public entities (like FEMA, the National Guard, state police, etc.) face due to the new buildings now in place. That and, of course, full disclosure in sales literature/contracts. In this way the private property owner exercises their right to dispose of their property as they see fit but the general public is not shouldering a public cost.
syrrim 9y ago

moomin 9y ago

An aside: I'm getting tired of hearing people talk about "unique events". We've had a lot of them recently. Maybe in future the weather is going to follow a different path from that which prevailed in the last century.

avyfain 9y ago

There is a great Planet Money episode[0] on the problems behind government insurance/subsidy of flood neighborhoods in Houston. Worth listening to. [0] http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2017/09/29/554603161/episode-797-flood-money http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2017/09/29/554603161/episo...

iaw 9y ago

> He said he still considers it a “unique event” and doesn’t think it’s likely those homes will flood again any time soon. Of all the things that came across in this article as disastrous this really caught me. This event wasn't "unique," something similar happened nearly 30 years ago. The question that needs to be asked is: when will this happen again?

Dowwie 9y ago

Lenders would know about the flood zone and act accordingly. Something is wrong with this story..