Say you have a property where you could buy flood insurance, but are not required to. Then there is a flood, which undermines the roots of a tree on your property and it falls on your house, damaging it greatly. You have regular home owners insurance, on your dwelling.
Will you be getting a check from the insurance company or not?
-rainy
If your house didn’t get flooded then yes the insurance should pay. If your house sustained actual flood damage then no. They can tell by checking the actual waterline that is left on your house after a flood. I can see where a tree could be in the backyard with a two foot deep river raging thru while the house was still a foot above the flood stage. Flood insurance only covers the actual house or contents, not the yard. Now if your foundation was eroded by the flood and the house collapsed due to that you would have a different situation, don’t believe you would be covered for that.
Just to clarify, I live in a floodplain and I am required to have flood insurance until my mortgage is paid off. After that I am no longer legally required to have flood insurance. I’ve thought about and asked many questions myself.
There’s an OP username that’s just asking for flooding troubles …
I am sure your regular insurance would pay for the tree damage no matter what caused the tree to fall. Mostly because one would argue that the immediate cause of the fall was wind-which would be hard to argue with. And having the wind knock over a tree onto your house is certainly covered by normal home insurance. I am sure there are some cheap policies/companies that would argue about it, but in general you are covered.
We had a lot of that in Katrina. Tree damage to homes was common and covered by the insurance. Water damage was not. That is why EVERYONE needs flood insurance. If you aren’t in a floodplain it is cheap. And it rains everywhere.
It rains everywhere, but it doesn’t flood everywhere. My mom’s house is over a century old, and it has never once flooded at all. My sister’s house, meanwhile, is only about 13 years old, and has flooded enough to damage the basement carpet three times so far. Both get about the same amount of rain (in fact, Mom’s house probably gets a bit more), and my sister’s house probably has better workmanship, but the soils are completely different.
If you live in a house that has never in a century flooded at all, despite plenty of rain, it’s hard to justify paying anything at all for flood insurance.
And flood insurance isn’t cheap if you live outside of a floodplain designated by FEMA. The FEMA insurance is regulated, they can only charge you so much and it’s based upon what they are paying out with minimal profit to the carrier. My carrier (State Farm) doesn’t even want to talk to me about the FEMA insurance because they only offer it to show that they are a full service provider of all your insurance needs, any questions and they direct you to FEMA. No discounts apply.
If you want to purchase flood insurance in a non-floodplain you will find that either A) it is not available or B) very high priced rider to your policy because it isn’t regulated or C) that floods are already covered by your policy since you are not in a federally mandated floodplain.
The lack of flood insurance just means they won’t pay for water rising from a nearby waterway.
Some insurance policies might exclude inundation , which is where the water on the land from the uphile side of the building enters the building.
So pretty much building insurance covers all storm damage, except flood, or except inundation and flood. (because if its a flood area, then inundation is flood… because its a flood plain ?)
Unless there’s been a significant change in water patterns near the house. For example, a city developing and adding a lot of parking lots can make water drain into creeks much more quickly than it did from grassy fields, leading to a new flood risk downstream. Generally if anyone is trying to push flood insurance on you it’s because of a major change like that.
That depends on what caused the flooding. Flooding can be caused by a spring thaw and not associated with a local storm. If that sort of flooding damaged a house, even indirectly by undermining a tree, the insurer might not cover it without flood insurance. Or maybe it would. Expect litigation.
My interpretation of the homeowners’ policy exclusions leads me to believe the loss described by the OP would not be covered. This applies to my VA HO policy but HO policies are similar from state to state.
The policy (Section 1 - Exclusions) states, “We do not insure for loss caused directly or indirectly by any of the following. Such loss is excluded regardless of any other cause or event contributing concurrently or in any sequence to the loss.”
Several exclusions follow but the important one is, “flood, surface water, waves, tidal water, overflow of a body of water . . .”
The only exceptions to the flood loss exclusion involve, “Direct loss by fire, explosion or theft resulting from water damage is covered.”
So, if a flood uproots a tree causing it to damage your home, the HO policy would not cover it, at least in Virginia but I have little doubt the language is similar in most if not all states.
OMG an actual GQ answer. And one that sounds correct to this insurance lawyer (albeit Australian).
Not really, it only answers one guys insurance policy in Virginia which is a state on the Atlantic coastline. There are 50 states and numerous insurance companies, there is no “typical” policy. So unless we know what state the OP is from and what his insurance policy says there is no way anyone can give an actual factual answer to the OP.
Thinking of buying a property in a area prone to occasional flooding, but a really nice creek-side aesthetic. So doing some thought experiments about what could and couldn’t happen. The insurance agents don’t like to play hypothetical games 
FWIW Georgia, not a community that has done the federal paper work to be able to get the government backed flood insurance.
So you’re saying if there is a lot of flood damage, I better boat over there and uh…ahem…make sure there is a fire. 
It’s been known to happen.
Not quite accurate. I have read the policies in VA, NC, FL, SC, DE, MD AND TX and the exclusion toward flood is the same. I quoted my VA policy for accuracy because I had it in hand. HO policies follow a standard template nationwide with some changes but I unaware of one that alters the flood exclusion.
My suggestion is that the OP read the policy addressing Section 1 - Exclusions.
What the OP is describing isn’t a flood, the creek rises when it rains. If it were to overflow the banks where the home is sitting it would be a flood. His concern is more related to erosion, not flooding. If a tree along the creek bank were to fall on the house he is considering he should be OK since neither the house or the creek are in a flood plain and the falling isn’t due to what would be classified as a flood by FEMA. The creek isn’t technically flooding it’s just doing what creeks normally do, rising and falling with the rain fall. The thing to do would be to just cut down trees that are near the house and enjoy the view.
So, was the flood, the insurance, or the question “strange”?
Good to know.
I have understood that there is no non-federally supported flood insurance in the US. Apparently that isn’t the case.
And there are insurance policies that cover floods as part of their standard coverage? That seems incredible to me-but good news.
As for directing you straight to FEMA-that is FEMAs doing. They decided too many people were getting bad or incomplete information from the insurance agents that it wasn’t worth paying them for that service. All information about flood insurance comes straight from FEMA now. The agents by and large are fine with that-they weren’t getting much commission anyway.
I just talked to someone from the Philly area. Pa. doesn’t have FEMA flood insurance available at all outside flood zones. So I learned something. I hadn’t realized.
I hadn’t realized that. From what I had been told, by insurance agents, FEMA reps, and activists in the field, Flood means any water from whatever source that didn’t enter the house via a water pipe. If something blocks the storm drain outside your house-or the ditch outside your house, and a heavy rain pushes water into your house-you were flooded. I had been under the impression that the only coverage for that anywhere was FEMA insurance. I guess I was wrong.