Problems found after you bought · Flood risk
When I bought this property, I didn’t know Flood risk could hold up a sale or a remortgage. Now I’m stuck.
Would you have bought the property if you had known?
If you had known about the flood risk and what it could mean before you committed, and understood the problems it could cause when you later came to sell or remortgage, would it have changed your decision?
- Would you have paid the same price?
- Would you have wanted it investigated first?
- Would you have walked away?
If knowing about the problem might have changed what you did, the next question is obvious.
Did you receive the right advice when you bought?
You may not know the answer yet. But if nobody explained the problem, or you are now questioning what you were told at the time, that is worth looking at.
You don’t need to know whether anyone was at fault. Tell us what happened and when you bought. We’ll talk it through with you.
Why flood risk can hold up a sale or remortgage
Flood risk is not one thing. A property may be exposed to flooding from rivers and the sea, surface water, reservoirs or groundwater. Coastal erosion is a separate risk, although some environmental reports show it alongside flood information. Official maps and many desktop reports describe risk to an area; they do not necessarily establish how likely it is that an individual building will flood.
In a sale or remortgage, the immediate difficulty is often insurability. Whether a mortgage is available on a flood-risk property may depend on whether adequate buildings insurance can be obtained and on the particular lender’s requirements. If flood cover is unavailable, or available only with a prohibitive premium or excess, the risk can affect mortgageability as well as the owner. Physical damage, safety, value and the likelihood of future flooding may also matter. A buyer’s conveyancer may therefore ask about flood cover, its terms and any previous flooding or claims.
Flood Re is designed to improve the availability and affordability of flood insurance for eligible homes. Not every property or buildings policy qualifies, and the scheme does not guarantee that a particular insurer will offer cover at a particular price. Eligibility should therefore be checked rather than assumed.
How the problem usually surfaces
The search flags a flood risk
The environmental search identifies a risk at or near the property, and the buyer’s solicitor raises enquiries before anything else can happen.
Different risks, different answers
The report shows a low river risk, a negligible groundwater risk and a significant surface water risk, and it is not obvious what that means in practice.
The insurance question
The buyer’s solicitor asks whether your insurers cover flooding, at what premium and excess, and may want a letter from them confirming the position.
A past flood or a claim
The property has flooded before. Previous flooding and claims are likely to be raised through seller enquiries and insurance applications, and must be answered accurately.
The seller could not help
When you bought, no information came back about whether the property had ever flooded, so the position was left open rather than established.
A climate rating in a newer search
Some current search products include forward-looking climate assessments covering flooding, subsidence and coastal erosion. Content and methodology vary between providers.
What you can do about it now
Get beyond the indicative result. An environmental search may flag a flood risk during conveyancing without establishing how likely the individual building is to flood. A dedicated flood risk report can provide more detailed desktop analysis, although a specialist assessment may still be needed. Your conveyancer can explain what the search reported and address relevant legal and lender requirements, but the physical risk is a matter for a qualified specialist or surveyor, and insurability for an insurer or broker.
Establish the insurance position. Check whether the present policy includes flood cover, the premium and flood excess, and whether previous flooding or claims have been recorded. The seller’s existing cover or a letter from their insurer may be relevant, but it does not guarantee that a buyer can obtain suitable cover. A buyer may need their own quotation, or confirmation that insurance meeting their lender’s requirements will be available when required. Flood Re eligibility should be checked, as should any flood protection measures or defences.
If you are selling, your conveyancer can ask the buyer’s solicitor what remains unresolved and whether it arises from the buyer’s lender’s requirements. If you are remortgaging, your conveyancer can check your proposed lender’s requirements directly.
What happened when you bought?
Flood risk was capable of being investigated when you bought. An environmental search or dedicated flood search obtained during the conveyancing process may have reported it and, depending on the form and process used, the seller’s property information may have recorded what the seller said about previous flooding. Further enquiries could also have been raised about the insurance position. Those documents would not necessarily have established how the physical risk or availability of insurance might change in future. The questions are what was reported, what further investigation was recommended, whether the insurance position was considered and what you were told.
Several records from the time may matter, and some may survive. The environmental or flood search shows what was reported, and on which measures. The property information form may record what the seller said about past flooding. The replies received may show what was asked of the seller’s insurers. There may be a letter from those insurers, a flood report, or a valuation mentioning the risk. Your report on title may show what you were told. The lender’s historical written instructions may also be difficult to recover, because they are revised regularly and superseded versions disappear from public view.
Was this property really mortgageable when you bought?
Getting a mortgage when you bought does not necessarily tell you how readily mortgageable the property was across the wider market. There are two historical questions worth asking.
What did your own lender’s written requirements say about flood risk when you bought? And what express requirements did other lenders have recorded at the same time?
Lenders’ written requirements were not necessarily uniform, and their wording changed over time. That means both which lender you used and when you bought can matter.
Lenders set out in writing what they expect a conveyancer to do about particular features of a property. Those instructions are revised regularly, and superseded versions drop out of public view, which can make a question as simple as what was my conveyancer told about flood risk in the year I bought? surprisingly difficult to answer from the sources available today. Lexsure has retained historical lender-specific conveyancing requirements since April 2007, so where the records permit they can help reconstruct what your lender’s requirements said at the time and how that compared with the wider lending market.
The wider picture
Historical lender requirements can help us understand how mortgageable the property was when you bought. The conveyancing file and the advice given to you also matter.
Lexsure holds historical Report on Title material: the reports conveyancers sent to homebuyers, going back years. That material shows the kinds of flood risk issues that were being addressed when firms reported to buyers, and it is a second and separate record from what lenders required.
Whether the search result was explained
Were you told which types of flooding were in issue, what the ratings meant, and whether the risk was at the property or nearby?
Whether insurance was investigated
Was the insurance position established before you committed, including whether cover included flooding, at what premium and excess, and whether claims had been made?
Whether Flood Re was mentioned
Were you told about the Flood Re scheme and asked to check whether the property was eligible for it?
Whether further investigation was advised
Were you advised to obtain a dedicated flood report, or to take the search to a surveyor or insurer, because it fell outside your conveyancer’s expertise?
Whether the effect on selling was explained
Were you told flood risk could affect insurance, value and a future sale, and could matter to a buyer’s lender?
These are examples of issues addressed in historical conveyancing material, not a checklist of what every purchaser should have been told. What mattered in an individual purchase depended on the circumstances and on what was known at the time.
So even if your mortgage completed, or there is nothing unusual in your lender’s historical requirements, it can still be worth talking to us about what happened.
Could this problem have been seen coming?
The relevant starting point is what was known, or could reasonably have been identified, when you bought.
What did the environmental search show? What did the seller disclose? What was in the conveyancing file? What were mortgage lenders requiring at the time? What kinds of flood risk issues were conveyancing firms addressing with homebuyers? And what were you actually told?
Taken together, that can help build a picture of whether the problem you are facing today was already something that should have been considered when you bought.
Did you receive the right advice?
What the historical evidence can tell us
Where the relevant lender and period are covered, we may be able to establish what that lender’s conveyancing requirements said when you bought, and how that compared with the wider record at the time.
- That does not by itself establish that anyone was negligent, or that you have a claim. Those questions need the original file and legal advice.
- The absence of express wording does not establish that the lender accepted the issue.
- What your conveyancer had to tell your lender and what they had to tell you are different questions, and the second depends on the retainer and the circumstances.
Time limits apply, and in some cases the date on which you first knew enough about the problem matters as well as the date you bought, which is why we ask about both. Our full methodology, including how we treat gaps in the record, is set out in the archive and its limits. Where a solicitor later needs formal historical evidence, Lexsure can provide source-evidenced historical lender information.
Sources and review
This page is about flood risk affecting a property, and its effect on insurance and lending. Guidance here about the present problem is general information. It is not legal advice about your property, and questions about the risk itself are for a surveyor or insurer.
Flood risk data is published by the Environment Agency long term flood risk service for England, and eligibility for the reinsurance scheme is explained by Flood Re. For properties in Wales, flood-risk information is published by Natural Resources Wales. This page states no lender requirement as a general rule, because requirements differ between lenders and change. Scheme eligibility and flood data change and must be reverified at each review.
Historical lender information is drawn from Lexsure’s archive of lender-specific conveyancing requirements, maintained since April 2007. Figures on this page state the population they are drawn from.
What the archive holds
Counts cover substantive changes to lenders' specific requirements in the UK Finance Handbook and elsewhere, covering issues such as flood risk. That requirements changed is a fact about the market, not about your purchase.