Declaring past flooding when selling a property

The recent articles (Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph) and their obvious challenges that people have when buying and selling residential and commercial properties, speaks to risks on many levels and buyer beware cannot be over emphasised. It also emphasises the importance of declaring past flooding when selling a property.

Clearly in the above articles, retrospective risk management once you have completed the purchase leaves only the potential for litigation and acrimony and a lengthy legal dispute which may not go in your favour.

However purchasing a property that has a history of flooding and has the potential to flood in the future may affect your ability to:

  • Sell the property in the future;
  • Obtain a mortgage and or re-mortgage on the property;
  • May negate your ability to obtain commercially reasonable buildings insurance and or any building insurance at all at the subject property (bearing in mind that buildings insurance is a legal / contractual requirement if you have a mortgage on a property), which imposed by any financial institution lending you money;
  • May have the potential to significantly reduce the value of the property once flooding and flood risk is noted at this location;
  • May cause significant distress and anguish with future flooding events affecting personal items at the location.

What could have been done in the conveyancing process that may have mitigated this loss and reduced the distress?

  • Hire a competent and professional team that is conversant with the risks associated with buying and selling residential and commercial properties in the UK;
  • Make sure that any environmental reports produced at the subject site have attended to increasing issue of flood risk in the UK.

Here at Unda we routinely carry out these assessments and are conversant with the challenges often encountered.  Unda can provide high-resolution flood risk mapping, showing depth and velocity of predicted flood water. Unda’s mapping of the residential area affected in the aforementioned articles shows the property in question to be at potential risk of flooding when compared to neighbouring properties:

Declaring past flooding when selling a property
Residential area of Newcastle described in articles. Click for high-resolution map (opens in new window)

 

For any flood related enquiries then please contact the team and we will be delighted to assist with your needs.

 

Declaring past flooding when selling a property
Residential area of Newcastle described in articles. Click for high-resolution map (opens in new window)