The Midwest has been hit hard by rain and floods for the past few weeks. I’ve seen a lot of videos showing homes being washed away by swollen rivers. What happens when your house and all of the land it’s sitting on is suddenly washed away? I understand the house would be covered under your policy, but what about the land? I guess the same question could be asked of property lost in a mudslide.
If your land is flat-ish it isn’t washed away. It’s just at a newer lower elevation than it once was.
Said another way, what you own is not any specific dirt or trees or rocks. But rather an area on the current surface of the Earth with specific latitude and longitude values at each of however many points make up the parcel’s corners. No matter what water may do, something still exists at those lat/longs that define your corners. And they (the lat/longs) ain’t movin’ no matter how much water reshapes the surface.
Now if what you mean is that what had been your lot is now under a lake or riverbed, well, that’s mostly still your lot. But read this for more:
Whether any of that is insurable, or is insured under FEMA-standard policies, is a detailed question I’m unequipped to address.
Anything, in theory, is insurable. But the standard FEMA policy (like my own Lloyds policy) covers only the structure and maybe contents.
Couple of things here, in the United States, unless your home is on a FEMA floodplan you cannot get flood insurance. So there is that.
Second, for my home FEMA offers two policy choices. The structure alone and the structure plus contents. The coverage of the structure alone covers the market value of the home, which is to say what someone would pay for the home plus the land.
Since my home is paid off I am not required to have flood insurance coverage anymore, and I don’t. When I was paying for it I was paying $4000 an year. Once I stopped coverage they came back to me and offered the same level of coverage for $2000 a year.
In keeping with accretion/avulsion, there are multiple locations along the course of the Mississippi where a small chunk of land on one side of the river belongs to the state on the other side of the river. I assume many land titles give someone title to X feet off the shore or to the middle? So those lines are forever, and if the river shifts, that’s up to the river - your land still ends at that line.
Also point out there are laws about the rivers and navigation, wetlands, etc. that presumably would preclude you from simply filling back in your avulsions…
Although apparently California law has the interesting wrinkle that land between high tide and low tide is public land, which annoys people (think Streisand effect) wanting to preserve their privacy. There have been lawsuits about whether blocking walkway easements is legal…
The same is true in Connecticut and there are also lawsuits here.
Federal data shows that across the flooded states of Nebraska, South Dakota, Iowa and Minnesota, the government has only issued about 26,500 flood insurance policies combined.
So, no: very few who were flooded in the Midwest have flood insurance.
As previously stated, a flood policy does not cover land.
And Florida; on both counts.
I think part of the question is if your land has gone from a nice field with a house, to a torrential gully, and the remains of the house headed towards the Atlantic, then is remediation of the flood damage covered.
If your insurance policy covers replacement / rebuilding of the house then remediation of the flood damaged land to create a stable building platform is implied and should be part of any expectation you take in getting your house back.
Of course, section 567 [B][ii][iv], written by ants in their weeniest handwriting specifically excludes you from taking advantage of this because such claims can only be made in months beginning with K.
Up to the policy limit, which is going to be way too low to create a stable building platform for the foundation and build the house.
I assume too, even if the insurance rebuilds the house, they company may then decline to insure the result - “Seriously, it’s 10 feet from a fresh gully 50 feet deep! Do you really expect us to cover that? We don’t care how deep the piles are…”
And if the flood leaves the house sitting on stilts (formerly pilings) 20 feet off the ground, I don’t think backfill to previous ground level is covered…?