Flood insurance claims

jetfiremuck

Probably a good time as any to get this out.

With the onset of huge claims for flood damage and the hassle in getting sorted will I think necessitate the Gov needing to set up a national flood insurance policy to provide insurance cover to those properties that are being dropped due to repeated claims for flood damage. How is this going to play out?

1. Are those houses built in flood prone areas a liability from future insurance and council restrictions and will be subject to insurance premium surcharges?
2. The houses that are saturated and require drywall replacement etcafter drying out how are the future mould issues going to be dealt with? Will a registry have to be kept? what about future buyers?
3. Are people going to have to wait for assessors before starting repairs?

Dannyboy83

jetfiremuck wrote: »

Probably a good time as any to get this out.
1. Are those houses built in flood prone areas a liability from future insurance and council restrictions and will be subject to insurance premium surcharges?

From private insurance - they simply will not get insurance
From a national insurance fund - doubt it, they will do risk equalization

2. The houses that are saturated and require drywall replacement etcafter drying out how are the future mould issues going to be dealt with? Will a registry have to be kept? what about future buyers?

That is probably up to the next government.
I don't think Fianna Fail will be around by the time we come to that bridge.

3. Are people going to have to wait for assessors before starting repairs?

I would say definitely. Our guy had to wait for the assessor to arrive anyway before anything could be done on the inside,
asset sheets including photographs were required etc..

gizmo555

jetfiremuck wrote: »

With the onset of huge claims for flood damage and the hassle in getting sorted will I think necessitate the Gov needing to set up a national flood insurance policy to provide insurance cover to those properties that are being dropped due to repeated claims for flood damage.

The point of insurance is that it provides cover against a possible loss. Flood losses on properties which are being repeatedly flooded are by definition certain and therefore uninsurable.

I'm not saying there shouldn't be any help from the exchequer for people in this very difficult situation, but mightn't it be better devoted to, for example, abandoning and/or demolishing such properties and rehousing the people concerned, rather than leaving them in situ to suffer repeated flooding?

seamus

jetfiremuck wrote: »

I think necessitate the Gov needing to set up a national flood insurance policy to provide insurance cover to those properties that are being dropped due to repeated claims for flood damage. How is this going to play out?

That's pissing good money after bad. Providing insurance in flood-prone areas is in fact assurance and either the premiums would be enormous or the cost to the country would be.

At a basic level, imagine the average flood damage caused to a house in a typical flood is €50k. And imagine that any given flood-prone house is likely to suffer flood damage every ten years (on average). This means that the premium on a flood-prone house needs to be more than €5k per year, just to break even.

OK, so my figures may be way off, but you get the idea.

It would be far more cost effective to provide incentives such as no stamp duty and grants to people who are "scrapping" a flood-prone home or business in favour of one in less flood-prone areas. Then we just knock the house and reclaim the land for flood plain. Businesses should be provided with grants and tax incentives to move their operations to new areas where they won't be decimated.

It'll cost in the short-term but in the long-term we can clear out the flood-prone towns and villages and we'll see less major problems caused by such flooding events.

We have a lot of land in this country, there's no reason why anyone should be living on flood plains.

We should also hold developers on a 20-year bond which requires them to completely rebuild/refurbish any home they build which ends up flooding (or causing flooding) due to the way it was built.

Dannyboy83

Eh.....its not necessarily assurance tho.

For example, Bandon didn't have a flood since 1973, thats 36 years.
But now nobody there can get insurance and there is a mini-exodus.

Provided the government implemented the correct preventatives, I imagine it would be out of the assurance zone and back into the insurance zone.

If they stall the ball (as per usual), then yea, I agree its assurance.