Hello and welcome. This is Nolan Formalarie with Discover NC Homes and Nolan’s news. Today I want to talk to you about a new feature I found on Realtor.com – a pretty neat feature, but we need to be very careful with it underneath each listing now, underneath Google maps, there is a button that says FEMA Flood Zone, which I think is wonderful because it empowers the buyer to know, at least with a few clicks, what type of flood zone either a home or a piece of land is in.
And that’s a good thing. This flood zone is actually very accurate. I checked it: I’d cross-reference that to a number of my listings and what we have in our GIS, which is a Brunswick County database system, and it is a very acurate button. So those are all good things. So you click on this button and it says “what type of zone?” Most zones, at least that my listings are in. are either an X or an AE zone.
X is a 500-year flood plain, AE is a 100-year flood plain. So that’s all good. The bad part about this button is they have something called “the flood factor” there just to the right, as it tells you what zone it’s in. The flood factor says it rates past, present and future flooding potential.
It doesn’t say anything if it’s flooded in the past, but it’s a rating it gives.
In all of these zones I went in on, which is in a flood plain, a 100-year flood plain, it gives you a rating 9 out of 10. So to me, 9 out of 10 is that’s a pretty severe chance that your property could flood. I’m here to tell you this is not true.
A lot of the homes that I have in these AE zones have either never flooded, maybe had one time with a specific storm some damage, and you cannot future predict, in my opinion, if something is going to flood or not. So I love the fact that the feature is there, but please ask your local expert.
We know where Florence dumped the most rain. We know the areas in these communities, as well as these neighborhoods and in general, in Brunswick County, what to stay away from and what to look at. So I wouldn’t let flood zone deter you. I think realtor.com – I give them kudos because it’s a great feature, but the flood factor portion of it – don’t pay much attention.
So to recap, great new tool on Realtor.com – has a flood feature. You can now easily tell what zone it is in, but I would not pay too much attention to their rating. I would get your local expert to fill you in on that.
As always thank you for having us. If you have any questions on flood zone on any properties, please let me know. Thank you so much.
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About Nolan Formalarie
Nolan Formalarie has been in the North Carolina Real Estate Industry for over 8 years and enjoys every minute of it. He is involved in every aspect of the industry including selling and purchasing residential property, home watch services, property management, association management and construction.
