Flood zone expands by 50,000 homes
New map leaves some homeowners unsure if insurance costs will rise.
More than 50,000 Palm Beach County properties will be reclassified as being in or touching flood zones in October, but for some homeowners, a new map made available this week on a county website is leaving them unsure about where they stand.
A Wellington homeowner noted a property now classified as relatively low risk shows a pending designation of “special flood hazard area” by October.
County officials acknowledged they were starting to get calls, but emphasized that does not necessarily mean the home itself is subject to higher insurance costs.
“Just because your property touches a special flood hazard area does not mean your house is in a special flood zone and you have to pay more for insurance,” said Doug Wise, county floodplain administrator.
Then again, flood insurance is a touchy topic in Florida. It is the top U.S. market with about 40 percent of the nation’s 5 million flood policies. As of March 31, there were
more than 100,000 policies in Palm Beach County, including more than 66,000 in unincorporated areas, nearly 15,000 in Boca Raton, more than 9,000 in Boynton Beach, and more than 7,000 each in Jupiter, Palm Beach and Delray Beach.
At stake are potential increases of hundreds or thousands of dollars a year to insure homes, with many changes occurring in western and central parts of the county.
“We’re getting lots of calls,” said Jeff Sullivan, Geographic Information Systems coordinator for Royal Palm Beach.
About 5 percent of Royal Palm Beach’s properties are being designated special flood hazard areas, he said.
Overall, Wise said 50,839 Palm Beach County parcels are moving to higher-risk flood zones, 45,640 are coming out and 36,983 are staying in.
County officials noted it’s the first time since 1992 that flood maps have been revised by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
The results follow years of planning and public meetings and efforts by local governments to gather data to make sure residents were not unnecessarily designated as living in areas with a high risk of flooding.
Meanwhile, Congress is working on bills to set the rules for what homeowners pay as the flood program comes up for reauthorization Sept. 30.
But as new flood maps move closer to taking effect Oct. 5, it is not always easy for homeowners to sort out what to expect on their particular property.
A bank or other mortgage holder can use the new designations to determine if it will require flood insurance on a property.
Typical homeowner policies do not cover floods. Flood insurance must be bought separately. Most policies come from the federal government’s National Flood Insurance Program, though private agents can arrange the sale and some private insurance companies now offer flood policies of their own.
Hundreds of thousands of Florida homeowners with a choice — that is, they were not required by lenders to buy it — dropped flood insurance after Congress increased costs in recent years in a bid to lower the flood program’s $23 billion debt load after storms such as Katrina and Sandy.