Flood Risks (Zone AE)

Hi All - I am looking at a park where a portion of it is in flood zone AE - so there is a 1% annual chance of flooding and 26% chance of flooding over 30 years.

I’ve heard Frank discuss type of flooding and the ‘flood level’- as in, is it a few inches of standing water or will it be a 3 foot (or higher) flood occurrence which could cause damage to the homes. Is there a website I can use to determine the ‘flood level’? If not, how would I go about determining the ‘flood level’?

(I understand this is a moving target and you will never know you’re going to have a huge flood until it happens, but I am trying to get a grasp of assessing this specific risk).

I have a park in a flood zone. The flooding is caused by a lake, not a river or stream. So the historical high water elevation is known. We had a benchmark placed by an engineer at 1 foot above the flood plane. All homes we have brought in are set at or above that bench mark. This is per county code. If set at that level, homeowners are not required by lenders to get flood insurance. Works for our particular situation. If your flood zone level is less predictable, this won’t work.

Thank you. How do you determine the ‘benchmark?’ Is there an online resource that notes the ‘benchmark’ is 2 feet high, or 4 feet high, etc.?

Why take the risk? It will forever have a negative issue and at time of future sale the property will have much fewer buyers. After owning a park in a never happened before flood area; the effort to comply and cost of time and money; never again. When buying you need to consider the residents and perhaps bear some of their problems when there homes flood—using the sites for non tiedown RV sites perhaps could be a solution. I thought most buyers have been warned enough on this topic to look to for a non-flooding property ==been there never again!!

For flood elevation go to fema’s website. https://msc.fema.gov/portal/home
And type in your address. If you look at the picture on the right side of the you will see a black squigally line with a number in such case on femas example is 50. That is the flood elevation at that location up stream is 51 downstream is 49 ect.
For a ROUGH elevation of your property go to google earth and elevation is on the lower right corner usually accurate to within 1-2’

Thank you so much, @vette74

It’s a lake so the high water elevation is known historically by the county. An engineer set the benchmark in the park and gave us documentation. Cost $700, but only needs to be done once.