I've no clue. Where we live even tho we are within sight of both a river and a creek we don't need flood insurance........the lower fields flood every spring. The house itself sits up high away from both bodies of water. IF our house ever went under the whole area would be under.
DH actually had to get a special map out with the elevations on it to prove to the insurance company that the house itself nor any of the out buildings were not in a flood zone.

Tell them to go to the tax office and look at the 100year flood plain map and ask at the flood office why so high preminums. Yes it has gone up, but it sounds like someone wants to make some money.

Depends on how much coverage, and whether you are in a low-risk area. I'm in a low-risk area and pay about $264 for $150,000 of coverage. The same coverage in a high-risk area would run $1514, and if it was coastal high-risk it would run $2920.

You can check out the rates at FEMA's website.

Here is a link that might be useful: fema's premium directory

I agree many variables. We pay $544 a year down from $1200. We had install a few more flood vents to qualify. We are 12 miles from any river, 3 miles for the nearest 1 ft wide creek. But we are still required to carry flood due to ground seepage. Strange thing is our other house is .5 miles from the intercoastal waterway & the main run off ditch (when they open the locks) is right across the street. No flood required. Go figure.

KAT

We're in a coastal 'High Risk Special Flood Hazard' area so we pay the maximum. As bad as that is...it's the Homeowners policy that's the real killer. Those rates have skyrocketed since Katrina. Besides the premium increase our deductible has also risen. For a named storm...our deductible is 15%. You can reduce that deductible to 5% if you mitigate loss. But, the cost of mitigation exceeds the cost of the 15% deductible in the event of a catastrophic loss. So, they've gottcha.

/tricia

We're in Houston and pay approx. $300/yr for $200K coverage. We're not in a flood zone.

I'm in Houston too. I got flood insurance shortly after Allison hit. We were fortunate to not get any water in the house, or even much past our curb, but so many areas which had never flooded before flooded in this storm. At that time we were not in a flood zone.

They just redrew all the flood maps for Houston and we are now considered to be in a flood zone. Because I already had flood insurance, I was grandfathered in for the old rates. I pay around $300 for $200K coverage (like tx happy camper above). I don't know how much I'd be paying if I'd not been grandfathered in, but I did receive in January for the first time a letter from the mortgage company requiring me to have it.

Tropical Storm Allison - pix

Approx $250/yr. In a flood zone. Coastal area...I can see dolphins out back, saw 2 yesterday :)

When we were buying a house in Minnesota, a week or so before closing we received a lettter from someone (maybe our lender or maybe our insurance agent) saying that we needed to get flood insurance, before the deal could go forward.

The house was across the street from a sizable lake (Bald Eagle Lake) but the property was about 50 feet or so above the level of the lake, and there were several square miles of land on the opposite side of the lake that was all less than 10 feet above the lake level.,

We protested and discovered that the person whose job it is to read the flood maps, simply wasn't very good at reading maps, and he thought the house was on the other side of the lake. We got a letter stating that fact and proceeded to closing without getting flood insurance.

Maybe the guy got tired of living in Minnesota, and moved to Deleware to do flood map lookups there. :-)

We used to pay $1000/year because our Lake Huron house was supposedly in a Class C flood plain.

Now we pay nothing because we filed for and obtained a LOMA (letter of map amendment) from the Feds. We first had to obtain an elevation survey which showed that out house was above the 500-year flood plain.

So of the other posters might benefit from going that route.

Okay, so it sounds like the $4000/$1900 figures my mother was hearing were some sort of mistake. There's no way her $235k townhouse could have had such a high premium. It was either a miscommunication or a negotiating ploy. Thanks for the info!

Costs can vary based greatly based on the flood zone and most importantly - based on the required elevation (above sea level) of the "living area" of the home(which is based on the flood zone).

Some older homes have "living areas" that are a few feet lower than what is required. This is when you see the flood insurance in the $3000+ range. If the same home was built on a few feet of fill dirt, or on pilings, it could have $200 in annual flood insurance premium.