Flood Insurance

Federal regulators have begun implementation of the Biggert-Waters Flood Insurance Reform Act, and REALTORS from across the country are reporting significant rate increases that call into question the continued affordability of flood insurance. In addition to extending the National Flood Insurance Program for 5 years, the Act included several provisions phasing out subsidized insurance rates for about 20 percent of property owners and buyers. NAR is working hard to keep flood insurance affordable, but they need your help. The best way to ensure NAR's credibility to Congress and FEMA is by having real life examples of how the recent changes to flood insurance are impacting homeowners across the country. NAR has asked that you support their efforts in identifying the cause of the increase and most effective response by by filling out the attached flood insurance survey - where you are asked to provide specific examples from your community on the impact of recent changes to the NFIP. Filling out this survey is the most important step you can take at this time to help support the efforts of NAR by providing them with actual evidence to present to Congress and FEMA. Please provide supporting documentation with your survey, if possible. Once you've completed your survey, please send it to April Brown, NAR Political Representative at ABrown@realtors.org, or you can reply here and I will forward on. Also, for more information, here is a study about the percentage of properties by state and by county that are currently subsidized under NFIP. http://www.arcgis.com/home/webmap/viewer.html?webmap=e0208985e8e64d44bca999325254ff5b&extent=-106.6909,33.1708,-76.9399,43.9898 You can zoom in to see county level data, and click on each county for more information. Keep in mind that the shading is the number of policies in the aggregate, not the percentage, so states like CA & FL appear to have the most because of their higher populations. Last, here is the link to the NAR flood insurance toolkit: http://www.realtor.org/topics/flood-insurance This is your opportunity to help educate policy makers on the true impact to property owners and the marketplace. If you have an example to share, please fill out the attached survey today.