Flood Elevation Certificate from Prime TX Surveys Houston TX

Looking for a local Houston survey company to measure your current home elevation and issue a flood elevation certificate? A flood elevation certificate helps identify whether your property is now in a 100 year flood zone, or maybe even a 500 year flood zone. Our professional, licensed surveyors are ready to help. We provide surveying services like measuring elevation for flood elevation certs across the greater Houston area, including The Woodlands, Katy, Fulshear, SugarLand, Clear Lake, Cypress, Tomball, and Hockley. We also provide flood elevation certificates to residents in the Rio Grande Valley including Mission, Laredo, Corpus Christi, Port Aransas, and Brownsville.

CALL (713)-864-2400 TO REQUEST A FLOOD ELEVATION CERTIFICATE MEASUREMENT

The devastation caused by Hurricane Harvey has prompted many mortgage companies and insurers to require property owners to acquire FEMA flood elevation certificates that help define risk and appropriate insurance coverage. Many of the homeowners whose homes flooded during Harvey were not in a flood zone, or their home was not in a flood zone when they bought it and nobody notified them they were now in a flood zone. If they had a recent flood elevation certificate to show they were not supposed to be in a flood zone, perhaps insurance companies or legal liability might have changed.

Updated Harris County and regional flood maps highlight areas that are now deemed at greater risk when waterways and bayous exceed their banks and cause flooding. Although such tools are helpful, they cannot necessarily accurately measure a home or commercial property’s elevation accurately. Knowing the precise elevation of your property allows you to measure it against the potential maximum known height of rising floodwaters.

These measures are considered key data in determining risk for floodplain managers working to implement Houston-area building regulations and for insurance carriers to provide accurate costs to property owners.

Why Flood Elevation Certificates Are Important To Property Owners

If your home or commercial building appears on a Flood Insurance Rate Map (FIRM) in an area designated by the letter A or V, in all likelihood it sits in a high-risk zone. Being assigned an A or V generally leads to higher insurance premiums because of the enhanced risk of flooding. However, a thorough elevation assessment and certificate can highlight a variety of characteristics that may improve your position. Most counties require homebuyers to obtain a FEMA Flood Elevation Certificate before they can buy a home.

Insurance agents generally rely on elevation certificates to evaluate the precise height of your property against a base flood evaluation in an effort to accurately determine a structure’s flood risk and coverage. Base flood evaluations are those that incur a 1-percent possibility of being impacted by floodwaters. A risk is generally considered by whether your building is above or below the base. The higher your home or commercial property is above the base flood evaluation of the zone, the lower your insurance premiums.

A comprehensive evaluation provides information that includes the lowest floor elevation, nature of the flood zone and unique characteristics of your structure. Those details are important to an insurance carrier when providing a full, fair home or business insurance rate.

Flood Elevation Certificates Help People In High-Risk Floodwater Areas

In order to get flood insurance coverage for properties deemed high-risk, owners are generally required to provide an elevation certificate from a recognized land surveying professional. Considering the widespread devastation of Hurricane Harvey, it’s common sense that property owners and insurance companies alike would want accurate risk assessments.

Although older buildings that were constructed before the flood insurance rate map was implemented may be able to bypass an elevation certificate, insurance carriers will be hard pressed to provide the lowest rates possible. Although not required in some cases, asking an insurance outfit to give you the best rate without a clear understanding of risk defies basic business principles. Also, subsidized rates for properties built before rate map are being eliminated by premium hikes. With an elevation certificate in hand, many property owners discover that their actual rate and coverage tends to be better than pre-FIRM subsidies.

Flood risk continues to be specific to each property and your actual risk may already be lower than you realize. Moving forward, the best way to get the insurance coverage you deserve at a fair price is to provide an indisputable flood elevation certificate.

What To Do If Your Property Is Incorrectly Mapped

In some unfortunate instances, property owners are incorrectly lumped into what is known as a Special Flood Hazard Area (SFHA). That designation can result in residential and commercial property owners being required to purchase unnecessary or excessively high flood insurance. On the contrary, someone can buy a home that is not in a flood zone but flood anyway because development of land put them inside a flood zone without any notification.

In order to resolve this, a property owner will need to secure an elevation certificate and submit a request to FEMA. If you have been incorrectly placed in a high-risk area, FEMA can issue one of the following corrective Letters of Map Change (LOMC).

• Letter of Map Amendment (LOMA)
• Electronic Letter of Map Amendment (eLOMA)
• Letter of Map Revision (LOMR)

Although changing your designation on a Flood Insurance Rate Map can be frustrating, the eLOMA process has helped to streamline the process. FEMA’s online application portal has cut wait times considerably. Traditional paper applications can take as long as 60 days to process. The first step in fixing this problem is to contact an experienced survey company and get an elevation certificate.

Who Needs Elevation Certificates for Flood Insurance?

It’s important for everyday people to understand that an elevation certificate is not just a one-time assessment to satisfy an insurance a carrier or mortgage holder. The evaluation provides vital information about the level of risk you and your loved ones face in the event of severe weather. Sometimes circumstances beyond your control change, putting your home, property, or business inside a designated flood zone area. Unfortunately, the county does not notify people when this happens, so it’s up to you to get your home or property surveyed regularly to mitigate any unanticipated flooding issues (and to know whether you definitely need flood insurance).

That being said, an elevation certificate may be a necessary requirement any time that you make significant structural changes to a property. For example, converting a garage or out-building into viable living space, adding a veranda or other substantial changes tends to change the value of the property. These changes also can result in the building shifting or settling. Combine just those to facets alone and you have a need for increased coverage and a different elevation risk. Keep in mind, even modest elevation changes alter flood risk.

Another important reason to get a professional flood elevation certificate is that communities are adopting revised FIRMs. Owning a property with an area deemed high-risk does not necessarily mean your property incurs the same risk as others. Consider a commercial warehouse with loading docks that are designed to be at truck-delivery height. It would be far less at risk of flood damage than a ground-level structure on the same zone.

The same reasoning applies to homes. Many are set on higher ground than others in a zone. The point is that you should be assessed based on the true elevation of your property and that’s why having a professional land surveying company provide you with a flood elevation certificate is in your best interest.

CALL (713)-864-2400 TO REQUEST A FLOOD INSURANCE ELEVATION CERTIFICATE MEASUREMENT.