So, Bergen Beach and Mill Basin are surrounded by a bay and before Sandy were condsidered zone B.FEMA's new flood maps due out in 2015 are proposing to make these areas AE 10...meaning that if the homes arent raised 10 ft, the flood insurance will probably go from 300 per year to potentially 8 to 10k per year. FEMA is treating this area as if its in florida or missippi.....many of the homes in... [more]
So, Bergen Beach and Mill Basin are surrounded by a bay and before Sandy were condsidered zone B.FEMA's new flood maps due out in 2015 are proposing to make these areas AE 10...meaning that if the homes arent raised 10 ft, the flood insurance will probably go from 300 per year to potentially 8 to 10k per year. FEMA is treating this area as if its in florida or missippi.....many of the homes in this area are attached and its virtually impossible to raise them. My concern is that this beautiful area(which sustained flooding...mostly 2 ft in basements) will be ruined if FEMA requires such exorbitant flood insurance....no one will buy or will be able to get mortgages and property values will plummet. Local politicians are fighting this but wondering what the liklihood is that these neighborhoods will take such a large financial impact due to mostly basement flooding......
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Response by Flutistic
about 12 years ago
Posts: 516
Member since: Apr 2007
This beautiful area will be ruined anyway, regardless of FEMA policies. The word "basin" is a big hint.
NY is actually a much worse place than Florida after a hurricane, because we have real winter breathing down our necks, and they do not.
We were all so lucky with Sandy, really, because we didn't get below freezing temperatures right away afterward, and we did not experience hurricane force winds.
I'm a superstorm Sandy person (the term "survivor" implies something more severe than I personally experienced. But really, that is what I am.)
It's foolish for all concerned for taxpayers to subsidize middle class residents so they can live in flood zones. If you want to live in a flood zone, O.K., but you need to pay insurance premiums appropriate to that considerable risk.
Our flood insurance premium pre-Sandy was $2400/year. I don't know what they raised it to after we sold, but I assume it is now at least $10,000, it might be as high as $30,000/year.
Beautiful areas throughout the NY region are going to either change radically or be destroyed in the decades to come. It's inevitable.
The smart money is leaving these vulnerable areas, but fear not, for now there are still people rich enough or stupid enough to buy into them. In the next storm I actually won't have a lot of sympathy for people who chose to stay when they could have left with their net worth intact.
Anyone who thinks 24 inches of water in a basement is not a very serious problem has never had that level of water in their basement. You would not believe the wide-ranging effects, it comes as a shock. And we had only 17 inches in our basement, thanks to a sump pump and sophisticated water handling system we installed prior to Irene.
A cubic foot of water weighs about 62 1/2 pounds....with 2 feet of flooding, that means many tons of weight pushing against foundation walls and floors, for days, something they were never built to withstand.
The surprising thing to us was the amount of damage caused by wave action in a basement by "only" 17 inches of water, and the resulting high humidity (despite the quickest possible pump out and drying). Somehow our breakers did O.K. after drying out, but anything electronic was destroyed even if it never touched the water.
Most of our neighbors could not work as quickly as we could, so they then had to battle mold, and some of them are still doing so, more than a year later. The mold can and does cause reactions so severe that people end up hospitalized.
No one who remains in these areas can say they didn't know of the risk.
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Response by fieldschester
about 12 years ago
Posts: 3525
Member since: Jul 2013
>It's foolish for all concerned for taxpayers to subsidize middle class residents so they can live in flood zones.
I disagree. We overtax the middle class. What's wrong with throwing some of it back for various pursuits?
The problem is that the basement is finished as "an apartment for mom!" so "just cellar flooding" gets pretty pricey if you can't get someone else to pay for it.
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Response by Eastside
about 12 years ago
Posts: 146
Member since: Aug 2009
The real issue is that lots of middle class families live in these areas...ie blue collar....they have mortgages....area was considered zone B and now becuase a 1x in 100 yr flood, its a flood zone that will have many families either abandon their properties due to flood insurance requirement on mortgage or sell at a deep loss......
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Response by Eastside
about 12 years ago
Posts: 146
Member since: Aug 2009
Flutistic - you sold after Sandy? What area were you in? Flood insurance premiums have not gone up yet since the new FEMA flood maps are still not in effect....so your flood insurance is still probably the same but if you were paying 2400 per month, then you were in ZONE A.....Bergen BEach, Mill Basin was ZONE B and annual flood insurance is 300 per year...still is..
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Response by Flutistic
about 12 years ago
Posts: 516
Member since: Apr 2007
Yes, I sold FSBO after Sandy, for full asking price that was on the high side for the market pre Sandy. This will definitely blow my cover, but what the hell, we lived in Long Beach, NY, four blocks from the ocean. All I can say is----we were incredibly, incredibly lucky.
That said...believe me, I hear you when you talk about the harm to working class families in flood risk areas. Our LB neighbors, too. The whole mess is heartbreaking for me. I hear news and I still tear up. There is so much suffering still going on.
But none of our emotions change the physical reality. Physics is physics.
You're talking NYC evac zones (A, B) and not FEMA flood zones (e.g. AV), which have terms based on wave action, among other things; the two are related but they are not congruous. Flood insurance is federal, not state/city, so it's FEMA metrics you want to pay attention to when talking flood insurance, not NYC storm evac zones.
Has Mill Basin/Bergen Beach's FEMA category changed radically, or at all, since Sandy?, or on the new *FEMA* flood tiles? Probably not, just by my eyeballing the location. And if it has, then it was probably long overdue.
FEMA has a metric for how often a flood is expected, and I haven't looked it up for Mill Basin, because it's not so easy to do that, as you'll discover if you haven't already, but I promise you the flood risk is not 1 in 100 years in that location. If you research it you'll see. It's not just storm risk, it's flood risk.
The Biggert-Waters Flood Insurance Reform Act, which dates from 2009 I think, is what's causing most of the increased premiums, not FEMA's assessment of flood risk. That's what politicians are now working on.
I hope a mechanism is found to help protect people's net worth, but the people who live in those areas need to wake up and smell the coffee.
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Response by Eastside
about 12 years ago
Posts: 146
Member since: Aug 2009
Well Bergen Beach/Mill Basin NEVER had a flood like this....so it does seem like 1 in 100 yrs......its not like its breezy point or long beach.....its a community surounded by a basin...but yes, now the RISK is real because it happened 1x and so this community will be treated like breezy pt, etc. The issue is many of these homes are attached and have lower levels....there is no way in hell they can be elevated ...Im surprised you sold right after Sandy...YOU WERE VERY LUCKY!
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Response by Flutistic
about 12 years ago
Posts: 516
Member since: Apr 2007
The risk is real not because it happened one time, Eastside, but because the risk is real.
People just believe in it now. Or they don't. It's like Santa Claus that way. The science is far from perfect but you either believe in the science or you don't. But the science was there before the storm.
I researched what happened after Katrina. In the short term, housing prices increased about 20% because people needed housing and so much of it was destroyed. In the long term prices declined below pre-storm, however.
We were planning on selling anyway for retirement reasons. We put our house on the market a few days before Sandy, showed it again starting in December, and it closed April 15, 2013. We never had an open house. Almost everyone who saw it made an offer, mostly low ball offers from locals with flood damage who wanted a more storm sturdy home, some from people whose homes were destroyed in places like Breezy. A broker brought us out-of-town buyers who made their offer from the photos alone.
If I were in Mill Basin right now I would put it on the market this spring or very early summer, FSBO, after installing storm-hardening features (perhaps a Healthy Basement system). I would make it glow, and I would price it well below market to ensure traffic, and advertise like crazy.
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Response by NWT
about 12 years ago
Posts: 6643
Member since: Sep 2008
Read the wiki pages on Mill Basin. All those streets and houses date from sixty years ago, after the war. Before then it was mostly marsh and wetlands.
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Response by Flutistic
about 12 years ago
Posts: 516
Member since: Apr 2007
Interesting letters in the WSJ supporting the OP's point:
The first letter writer says that houses along rivers and creeks are safer than houses along the coastal areas, which is emphatically not true, as people living along the Mississippi River will attest.
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This beautiful area will be ruined anyway, regardless of FEMA policies. The word "basin" is a big hint.
NY is actually a much worse place than Florida after a hurricane, because we have real winter breathing down our necks, and they do not.
We were all so lucky with Sandy, really, because we didn't get below freezing temperatures right away afterward, and we did not experience hurricane force winds.
I'm a superstorm Sandy person (the term "survivor" implies something more severe than I personally experienced. But really, that is what I am.)
It's foolish for all concerned for taxpayers to subsidize middle class residents so they can live in flood zones. If you want to live in a flood zone, O.K., but you need to pay insurance premiums appropriate to that considerable risk.
Our flood insurance premium pre-Sandy was $2400/year. I don't know what they raised it to after we sold, but I assume it is now at least $10,000, it might be as high as $30,000/year.
Beautiful areas throughout the NY region are going to either change radically or be destroyed in the decades to come. It's inevitable.
The smart money is leaving these vulnerable areas, but fear not, for now there are still people rich enough or stupid enough to buy into them. In the next storm I actually won't have a lot of sympathy for people who chose to stay when they could have left with their net worth intact.
Anyone who thinks 24 inches of water in a basement is not a very serious problem has never had that level of water in their basement. You would not believe the wide-ranging effects, it comes as a shock. And we had only 17 inches in our basement, thanks to a sump pump and sophisticated water handling system we installed prior to Irene.
A cubic foot of water weighs about 62 1/2 pounds....with 2 feet of flooding, that means many tons of weight pushing against foundation walls and floors, for days, something they were never built to withstand.
The surprising thing to us was the amount of damage caused by wave action in a basement by "only" 17 inches of water, and the resulting high humidity (despite the quickest possible pump out and drying). Somehow our breakers did O.K. after drying out, but anything electronic was destroyed even if it never touched the water.
Most of our neighbors could not work as quickly as we could, so they then had to battle mold, and some of them are still doing so, more than a year later. The mold can and does cause reactions so severe that people end up hospitalized.
No one who remains in these areas can say they didn't know of the risk.
>It's foolish for all concerned for taxpayers to subsidize middle class residents so they can live in flood zones.
I disagree. We overtax the middle class. What's wrong with throwing some of it back for various pursuits?
Here's one that didn't sell because the price wasn't lowered enough to offset the increased flood-insurance premiums: http://streeteasy.com/nyc/sale/1003569-house-2167-east-70-street-bergen-beach-brooklyn
The problem is that the basement is finished as "an apartment for mom!" so "just cellar flooding" gets pretty pricey if you can't get someone else to pay for it.
The real issue is that lots of middle class families live in these areas...ie blue collar....they have mortgages....area was considered zone B and now becuase a 1x in 100 yr flood, its a flood zone that will have many families either abandon their properties due to flood insurance requirement on mortgage or sell at a deep loss......
Flutistic - you sold after Sandy? What area were you in? Flood insurance premiums have not gone up yet since the new FEMA flood maps are still not in effect....so your flood insurance is still probably the same but if you were paying 2400 per month, then you were in ZONE A.....Bergen BEach, Mill Basin was ZONE B and annual flood insurance is 300 per year...still is..
Yes, I sold FSBO after Sandy, for full asking price that was on the high side for the market pre Sandy. This will definitely blow my cover, but what the hell, we lived in Long Beach, NY, four blocks from the ocean. All I can say is----we were incredibly, incredibly lucky.
That said...believe me, I hear you when you talk about the harm to working class families in flood risk areas. Our LB neighbors, too. The whole mess is heartbreaking for me. I hear news and I still tear up. There is so much suffering still going on.
But none of our emotions change the physical reality. Physics is physics.
You're talking NYC evac zones (A, B) and not FEMA flood zones (e.g. AV), which have terms based on wave action, among other things; the two are related but they are not congruous. Flood insurance is federal, not state/city, so it's FEMA metrics you want to pay attention to when talking flood insurance, not NYC storm evac zones.
Has Mill Basin/Bergen Beach's FEMA category changed radically, or at all, since Sandy?, or on the new *FEMA* flood tiles? Probably not, just by my eyeballing the location. And if it has, then it was probably long overdue.
FEMA has a metric for how often a flood is expected, and I haven't looked it up for Mill Basin, because it's not so easy to do that, as you'll discover if you haven't already, but I promise you the flood risk is not 1 in 100 years in that location. If you research it you'll see. It's not just storm risk, it's flood risk.
The Biggert-Waters Flood Insurance Reform Act, which dates from 2009 I think, is what's causing most of the increased premiums, not FEMA's assessment of flood risk. That's what politicians are now working on.
I hope a mechanism is found to help protect people's net worth, but the people who live in those areas need to wake up and smell the coffee.
Well Bergen Beach/Mill Basin NEVER had a flood like this....so it does seem like 1 in 100 yrs......its not like its breezy point or long beach.....its a community surounded by a basin...but yes, now the RISK is real because it happened 1x and so this community will be treated like breezy pt, etc. The issue is many of these homes are attached and have lower levels....there is no way in hell they can be elevated ...Im surprised you sold right after Sandy...YOU WERE VERY LUCKY!
The risk is real not because it happened one time, Eastside, but because the risk is real.
People just believe in it now. Or they don't. It's like Santa Claus that way. The science is far from perfect but you either believe in the science or you don't. But the science was there before the storm.
I researched what happened after Katrina. In the short term, housing prices increased about 20% because people needed housing and so much of it was destroyed. In the long term prices declined below pre-storm, however.
We were planning on selling anyway for retirement reasons. We put our house on the market a few days before Sandy, showed it again starting in December, and it closed April 15, 2013. We never had an open house. Almost everyone who saw it made an offer, mostly low ball offers from locals with flood damage who wanted a more storm sturdy home, some from people whose homes were destroyed in places like Breezy. A broker brought us out-of-town buyers who made their offer from the photos alone.
If I were in Mill Basin right now I would put it on the market this spring or very early summer, FSBO, after installing storm-hardening features (perhaps a Healthy Basement system). I would make it glow, and I would price it well below market to ensure traffic, and advertise like crazy.
Read the wiki pages on Mill Basin. All those streets and houses date from sixty years ago, after the war. Before then it was mostly marsh and wetlands.
Interesting letters in the WSJ supporting the OP's point:
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304451904579238181611344684
The first letter writer says that houses along rivers and creeks are safer than houses along the coastal areas, which is emphatically not true, as people living along the Mississippi River will attest.