Selling My House Situated in a Flood Zone

Selling a property built in a flood plain

Due to increased flooding risk across the UK, many property owners in flood risk zones fear that their home might be unsaleable or indeed very difficult to sell. Though buying a house in a flood-prone zone is not for everyone, a number of buyers can be happy with this risk. Specialist property buyers like ourselves can take a pragmatic view when it comes to making a fair offer on such houses given the risks involved. We are happy to discuss our approach to valuation in detail if you would like to hear more. Our team can be contacted on 020 7183 3022.

The various types of flooding that can often occur are as follows:

• Sewer
• River
• Surface water
• Groundwater
• Coastal

With the continuing effects of global warming along with climatic variations, we are seeing the areas at risk of flooding evolving. As a house seller you should consider this risk and bear in mind that any potential buyer will be making enquiries with regard to this specific risk and paying careful attention to watercourses, such as the location and route of rivers and the coastline in relation to the property itself.

Do I have to mention historic flooding?

When you sell your house, you will need to complete a Seller’s Property Information Form (SPIF), and this will ask you detailed and direct questions regarding the flooding history of your property. This form is then sent to the purchaser’s solicitor as part of standard pre-contract enquiries. It is important for you to complete the form truthfully and to the best of your knowledge. The form often asks if any part of your property (including the surrounding garden, buildings or land) have ever been flooded amongst other pertinent questions.

As well as the SPIF, the purchaser’s solicitor will often make an Environmental search which contains flood data and a flood risk assessment specific to your property. These are commonplace and indeed typically compulsory if the buyer is buying the property with the requirement for a mortgage.

Providing as much detail as possible on the Seller’s Property Information Form

Given the searches will reveal historic flooding data, this is all the more reason to be truthful on the Seller’s Property Information Form otherwise there is a risk that the buyer will no longer trust you if you have decided to be sparing with the truth. Some points you may wish to consider disclosing:

• Highlight any preventive measures you have taken in response to flood risk
• Flood defences in place
• Detail any works carried out to defend your home from flooding
• Detail any historic flooding events on your property

What is flood insurance?

Flood insurance is often included as part of your standard buildings insurance policy, however it typically does not cover your possessions or contents. You may choose to have flood insurance in case of:

• Flooding from sea water due to a high tide or storms
• A river / bursting its banks
• Surface water or groundwater flooding resulting from heavy rainfall or a burst pipe

How does flooding affect home insurance?

As I’m sure you appreciate, any property in a flood zone will likely attract higher insurance premiums and indeed can possibly be uninsurable. If you live in an area that is deemed to be at a greater risk of flooding, you may be requested to obtain an “Insurance-Linked Request Letter”. This can be provided free of charge by the Environmental Agency and contains details such as:

• Dates when the area experienced previous flooding
• Planned improvements to reduce the flood risk in the area
• Most recent National Flood Risk Assessment that has been carried out

You can find our more on the Environmental Agency website.

Your options if your home currently has flood damage

Given that your property is situated within a flood zone, there is the possibility that you are currently dealing with structural damage to your home from a flooding event.
If that’s the case, you will have to decide whether you want to try selling your house or flat “as is” in its current condition, or whether you want to fix the damage before trying to find a buyer. Repairing any problems caused by flooding would help in preventing a situation where someone is interested in your home but significantly reduces the price that they offer for it based on how much they think it would cost them to address the issue as the property’s next owner.
Fixing flood damage ahead of selling could also make it easier for a potential buyer to get approved for a mortgage. Some home loan providers might be wary of approving a mortgage for buying a flood-damaged property due to concerns that it will be difficult to resell it in the future, should the buyer default on their mortgage repayments. For that reason, they could deny someone a loan to purchase your property, which would then make selling to them impossible.
Similarly, a lender might decline a mortgage application if your property is located in a high-risk flood zone, as the website Online Mortgage Advisor notes.
But there are many homeowners who simply will not have the time, money or interest in fixing flood damage before trying to sell their property. If this applies to your situation, rest assured that you will still be able to find a buyer, with one solution being to get in touch with a quick buyer like LDN Properties that has experience with purchasing homes like yours.
You would not only get a competitive offer for your property, but you’ll also enjoy a speedy selling timeline that should be completed within a handful of weeks. And as an added bonus, you will get to keep your expenses low because you won’t be charged any commission.

Selling a home in a flood zone

There can often be far more to a property than just the fact that it is situated in a flood zone. It is these additional features that may set the property apart from others and assist finding a buyer for the property. For example, you can find extremely picturesque houses and cottages with river and sea views that a buyer may be keenly interested in.
There are usually four ways that you can try selling a home in a flood zone, which includes quick buyers as well as selling with an estate agent, selling without any assistance or selling at an auction. There are clear pros and cons with each of these strategies based on the amount of time that they typically take, the fees that you might have to pay, and other factors.
Consider making a list of your top goals with selling your home, such as whether you are open to paying commission, how fast you want to sell and the ideal sale price for your property. Then compare these factors against the specific information about all four selling options below, because this should help with narrowing down the choices to the best one for your needs.

Selling to a quick buyer

LDN Properties and other quick home buyers have the funds available to immediately buy almost any type of leasehold or freehold home. This reduces the typical timeline when selling this way down to just a few short weeks, and this includes exchanging contracts and paying the seller the full proceeds, making it often the swiftest way to sell any type of property.
For homes located in a flood zone, this can be a good way to sell because quick buyers have plenty of experience with buying so-called problem properties. They will give you a fair and fast offer for your home no matter its location, or its age, condition, shape, size or type.
In addition to the speed with which you can sell a property with a quick buyer, there’s another benefit in that the honest companies will never charge you any commission, so you can count on receiving the full sale proceeds. That’s favourable to selling with an auctioneer or an estate agent, where you will have to pay commission that will be deducted from the final proceeds.
Selling to a quick buyer is also a very streamlined, no-stress and straightforward choice, starting when you get in touch with the company about selling your home. Within the first hour of talking, you should be offered an initial quote, and you’ll have at least a week to consider it.
If you accept this initial offer, the next step will be for one of the company’s representatives to visit your property in order to inspect the interior and exterior, as this will help inform their final offer. You will only need to agree to this one viewing when selling to a quick buyer, compared to possibly dozens or more viewings by strangers when you sell through other methods.
And if you then accept the final offer, the final stage is when the quick buyer will move speedily to work with your solicitor or other legal representative to sign all of the required legal papers and complete the other steps necessary to finalise the purchase. From start to end this entire process should only take a handful of weeks, which is much faster than other options.

Selling with an estate agent

When you sell a home through an estate agent, they will handle all of the main steps needed to find a buyer. This starts with creating a listing that describes your property and features photographs of the interior and exterior, which they will advertise online, in their office and in the local newspaper. They will schedule viewings to give people tours of your home, and hear offers from buyers.
For putting in all of this effort, the average estate agent will charge you commission if they are able to sell your home. This is often set within a range from 1.15 percent to 1.40 percent of a property’s sale price, and it will add to yours costs as it’s taken out of the sale proceeds.
Expect to wait a long time before selling when you use an estate agent, as it may take many months or even more than an entire year before you receive a genuine offer. Even then, someone can make a serious offer but later change their mind and withdraw it, making the sale fall apart – and they can do this without any penalties if contracts are not yet exchanged. You would then need to start again with seeking a buyer, delaying the process much further.
Note also that some estate agents might not be skilled at selling properties in flood zones, so you should ask whether individual estate agents have sold such homes in the past. Don’t use any that lack this experience as it implies they will find it hard to sell your property.

Selling on your own

You could try selling your home in a flood zone without any assistance from an auctioneer or an estate agent, but this would require that you take care of all the steps involved with finding a buyer. You will need to make a listing, advertise it, schedule viewings and hear offers.
This is a large amount of work and it will take up a lot of your time, along with having the potential to be very stressful. For these reasons, it is usually only suggested that an owner pursue this method of selling if they have managed to sell a similar property in the past or if they have a suitably skilled friend or family member that can help with the sale at zero charge.
Without this type of experience, it could be more than a year before you are able to sell your home. For those owners who would like to sell as fast as feasible, you should consider some of the other choices such as selling to a zero-commission quick buyer like LDN Properties.
One problem with selling on your own, which it shares with selling via an estate agent, is that someone can make a legitimate offer to buy your property but then later rescind it. This would prompt the sale to collapse and require that you begin again with looking for a buyer, extending your selling timeline much further. And there is nothing that you can do to penalise the person that withdrew the offer if you have not already exchanged contracts on your property.
Selling this way does have the advantage of helping you avoid having to pay any commission to an estate agent or an auctioneer for securing a buyer for your home, which initially helps with reducing your total expenses. But you could find that upfront saving is easily cancelled out by the money that you’ll need to spend on advertising your listing and various other steps.
If you are determined to not have to pay any fees, you could instead sell your home to a zero-commission quick buyer, which would not only ensure you will receive the total sale proceeds but also provide you with a much faster sale that is completed within a number of weeks.

Selling at an auction

Another way to try selling your home is through an auctioneer, who will take care of putting together and advertising a listing, hosting the auction, and overseeing a successful sale.
Ahead of selling your home, you will be asked to choose a reserve price – this is the lowest price at which you agree that your property can sell. It’s important that you decide on a reserve price that should still result in a profit from the sale of your flat or house even after the auctioneer has deducted their commission. If you don’t, there’s the risk that you might only break even on the sale compared to what you paid for the home, or even sell it at a loss.
Selling at an auction is far from the speediest way to find a buyer, as there is a lot of waiting involved, starting with many weeks or even months between the day that you decide to sell this way and the day on which the auction happens. If your home manages to sell, the buyer then has about 28 days to complete their tasks needed to finalise the purchase.
Bear in mind that you’ll also have to pay fees when selling via this method. A typical auctioneer could charge you commission at about 2.5 percent of your home’s sale price, although this can be as low as 1 percent or as much as 3 percent or higher, as the Market Financial Solutions website notes. This fee increases your overall expenses because it will be subtracted from the auction proceeds.
It’s always worth asking auctioneers if they are open to either having the winning bidder pay a share of your fees, or to reduce the rate of commission that they will charge, because either of these outcomes could be a solution for reducing the cost of selling using this method.
Also, some auctioneers might never have attempted to sell a home situated in a flood zone before, and this suggests that they could struggle to get auction attendees interested in your house or flat. Always check with specific auctioneers about their track record in selling homes like yours in a flood zone, and avoid using those that do not have this experience.
Here at LDN Properties, we are a specialist home buyer and will consider all types of houses and flats, including those in flood zones and near to watercourses. Our team of professionals are happy to discuss the sale of your property further and explain how we can assist further.

Houses in flood zones – your questions answered

LDN Properties has been buying and making offers for all types of homes since 2003, including those in flood zones, and here you can find our answers to sellers’ frequent queries about these properties: