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Shop With External Hazards to Your Investment in Mind
We have, in past lives, purchased houses located in flood, tornado and severe storm zones. We have also, in the past lost homes to floods caused by severe storms.
It is one thing to discover a dream home and quite another to discover said dream home is liable to float away in a severe rain storm or become consumed in a forest fire.
So, how do we protect ourselves and our investments?
Our last and final home we purchased in mid Covid19 hysteria. Any other time might have placed this home out of reach financially, but the combination of pandemic scares, racial strife, government over reach and winter coming on, the stars seemed to converge and we were able to reasonably research and ultimately obtain exactly what we wanted in a home.
A safe physical location, in a quiet neighborhood with distance between neighbors and off the beaten track.
Because we desired coastal residence our primary interest was water, both river and ocean. We wished to avoid and forgo both flood and tsunami, risks, thank you.
Don’t trust the realtor to honor your wishes. We specifically said no flood zones but were shown several…just in case, some of which were very difficult to turn down, but turn down we did.
Because we live in California our secondary interest was
- Earthquakes,
- Fire,
- Traffic,
- Crime (types of crime)
- Weather
and other negatives like homeless encampments, churches, schools, lawyers…politicians
…and so on.
It always helps to engage in conversations with locals to get a feel for the area in case of unfamiliarity with the area. Local natives seem to enjoy filling strangers in on the skuttlebut, and you can do this research in any local restaurant, grocery store and filling station.
Here’s a good interactive map published by FEMA. We have no idea what it is supposed to do but it sure gives great views of topography and land levels.
https://hazards-fema.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html
