Washington State Flood insurance, New Flood maps for AE, King County and Snohomish County

By VA / July 7, 2020

Dialogue with the clients on the new flood zone maps that Washington State will be getting in 2020.

Joe Munchel Rental Property Invester (Kirkland, WA)

Suprise New flood zone map for Washington State now I need Flood Insurance

I’ve owned the home for about a year now and they just put it in a flood zone 1 month ago. I’m going to shop around for the insurance but I’m still gonna have a surveyor go out there to hopefully have the house taken off.

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Hi Joe thanks for reaching out.

If your property recently got put into a flood map: AE flood zone I would strongly recommend that you take advantage of the government subsidy that you can get when a property is moved from a flood zone X to an AE. You see the government policy allows you to get coverage at the X flood zone rate (this is called the Prefered Rate Policy) IF you buy the policy within a calendar year of the map change. Washington State had a really large map change 6/19/2020 where 22,529 properties were moved into a flood zone and one more coming for king count on 8/19/20 where another 20,712 properties will be moved into a high risk flood zone.

The beauty about buying the government policy within a calendar year of the map change you see significant savings and if you are working with a flood insurance expert you can transfer the policy to a new owner and they too can benefit from the savings.

You can also look for a private flood policy but I don’t think you will get the same subsidized policy the private market is best for those people that have properties that were already in the Ae flood zone (also called the high risk flood zone). For now I would recommend that you take advantage of the heavy subsidy and then when it starts getting more expensive shop out to the private flood market. You can search google “private flood insurance” skip the ads.

Your flood nerd