Has anyone's home been newly designated to be in a flood zone?
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No, I never found out why the LOMA was only good for the life of the loan. Interestingly, enough, I am in the process of refinancing through my same lender (3 years after my original refi and down 1.5 points (2.95%) to a 10-year loan), and the lender accepted my LOMA on record - no flood insurance required. Just for grins, I did file the LOMA with the county clerk's office as a document on file for my property - so if I should decide to sell, it will let any prospective buyers know that they can avoid flood insurance even though it is waterfront property. I'm thinking it's just fine print that no one would really notice... I hope!
After further research, I think the words "Life of the Loan" have a special meaning in the context of lenders checking whether a property is in a flood zone. Specifically, it appears that, when they hire a company (like "Corelogic", for example) to make a flood determination, they are hiring that company to make that check on an ongoing basis for the "life of the loan." I think maybe your LOMA is stating, using the same wording, that you are no longer in Zone A every time they subsequently perform that check.
Yeah... I think you're right that FEMA won't accept GPS readings from homeowners. Even for my own benefit, I tried to use a hand-held GPS to determine elevation and found that it is very inconsistent (i.e., checking the same position multiple times yielded wildly varying elevations.) I've since learned that consumer GPS's are generally pretty poor at measuring elevation. They might be correct +/- 100 feet or so, but nothing good enough for real surveying. I think there are pricey GPS devices designed for surveying that are way better.
In my case, I ended up purchasing an auto-level from ebay... Old fashioned surveying technology, but it works and is very precise. I did this a while before my FEMA fiasco started, mostly to help with grading our acres for irrigation. My 9-year-old son is quite an expert at holding the staff while I look through the sight, but I think he's pretty tired of hours spent doing that.
My flood insurance premium just went up 10 fold. From under $400 a year to almost $4,000 a year. Using the same FEMA map dated 1988 that has always been used by my lender and insurance agency a company: CoreLogic in Austin , Texas did a new overlay on that map and it put a lot of properties into the Zone A classification. When I wrote to CoreLogic and requested information as to what they based their findings on -I never received a reply. The small print on their map overlay states that it is an approximation for illustrative purposes only and may contain inherent margins of error. AND this is what caused my insurance premium to skyrocket. Gee- Do you think that FEMA and the insurance companies might be trying to recoup some of the money they spent on actual disasters?
Mine just went down....$1500 to $500 per year. I got a new survey done. Cost. Few hundred bucks but it was worth it. I'm in seabrook beach.
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