Getting Out Of Flood Insurance – eLOMA In The Quad Cities
Any house that is within the bounds of FEMA’s Special Flood Hazard Area (SFHA) must have flood insurance before a loan can be made on the property.
If you don’t believe that your home lies within these regulatory bounds, you can hire a Professionally Licensed Land Surveyor to perform an elevation certificate to determine if you are in/out of the SFHA.
If the elevation certificate determines that you are not at risk of flooding (IE: Not inside the 100-year flood), you can plan on getting out of flood insurance through something called an “eLOMA” or “Electronic Letter of Map Amendment” that must also be completed by a land surveyor.
What eLOMA does is it “rezones” your home out of the flood zone.
In easy terms: they recognize that the structure is no longer in the flood plain.
FEMA states that these LOMA’s normally take 6-8 weeks, however, using eLOMA usually we can get a final determination within 1-3 weeks (This timeframe includes the audit process).
After you receive the acknowledgement that the structure is not in the flood plain, it is as simple as showing this documentation to your bank, and it will no longer be obligated to require flood insurance for your mortgage.
However, you may want to consider keeping your flood insurance if you are worried about flooding.
But if you’re not too worried about that possibility, and don’t want to pay the (ever increasing) insurance premiums, we can help.
eLOMA Process For Getting Out of Flood Insurance
1. Contact Richard Anderson using this contact form or by calling.
2. We’ll do an elevation certificate to measure the base flood elevation and the lowest adjacent grade of your property/house (to determine if you are in-out of the flood zone).
3. If you are shown out of the flood zone, we’ll submit all the necessary documents to FEMA.
4. We’ll hear back from FEMA when they are done reviewing the necessary information (usually 1-2 weeks after submission).
5. We’ll provide all the required documentation that you must provide to your bank to get out of the flood insurance premium.
It can save thousands in flood insurance costs over time (especially for new home owners).
So if you don’t believe you are in the flood zone, or have any other questions about this process, just give us a call!