Buying a house in Houston. Any way to check whether a particular house or street flooded? (Friendswood: to move, garage)

[shanv3]

You may want to be careful because Rich areas like Bellaire , Heights flooded heavily. Some poor areas scraped through. I live in a poor community within a rich area, but it magically didnt flood.

[Sollaces]

Go to your insurance agent and ask to look up a street, a subdivision and see if there are any claims on it. That is if you find a house. You can also check youtube and see if there is a drone video of flooding. Look up the homeowners association and find their page, facebook or whatever and ask. Get on nextdoor (it is free) and check that way. You can post and ask questions, neighbor to neighbor.

If you can't go door to door with your concerns, go to the local fire station. They would know. I bet they could show you their logs on those days.

So if you find a house, go ahead and look up other homes on the street. Look at the street view. Look at the outside of the homes, house by house. Do you see any signs of a line, a flood line on the exterior brick? Do you notice the low end of the street and where the drains are? What about the drainage ditches (bayous) are those deep? Does the blurb say completely redone? Those are all clues. If you can't see anything on the house, look at the wood fence. Check for gutters, too because when homes don't have an overhang or gutters the mold or rain causes problems on the brick. It's easy to spot, once you see it you'll know what I'm talking about.

There is a thread on this forum (Houston) - Which neighborhoods didn't flood. Do a search. I reposted it a few weeks ago. There are a lot of people moving into the area and they want to know. They should make that one a sticky.

Check the news sites: click2houston, channel 13 Houston, channel 26 Houston and look up Harvey flooded news. Look online for news articles. Note where they are filming from.

[Sollaces]

Originally Posted by Jack Lance

Here's a link to a thread I posted immediately after the event (Harvey) maybe this will help you in your search..

//www.city-data.com/forum/houst...er-harvey.html

The POWERS THAT BE need to sticky your thread. Honest. So many are buying new homes, new to Houston. Lots of homes for sale.

[snackdog]

To be safe, you should assume the next flood will be within 5-10 years and will be worse than Harvey. Thus, homes and neighborhoods which didn't quite flood this time may be well under water next time. Your best bet is go for a fairly dry area and then pile on plenty of flood insurance unless the house is on stilts.

[txdemo]

Originally Posted by snackdog

To be safe, you should assume the next flood will be within 5-10 years and will be worse than Harvey. Thus, homes and neighborhoods which didn't quite flood this time may be well under water next time. Your best bet is go for a fairly dry area and then pile on plenty of flood insurance unless the house is on stilts.

Project Brays will be completed next year or so and it's supposed to drop the level of flooding from Brays by 1.5 to 2 feet. So hopefully that helps folks that didn't flood during Tax Day or Memorial Day but did flood during Harvey.

[hendersj31]

Heights? This is news to me.

Originally Posted by shanv3

You may want to be careful because Rich areas like Bellaire , Heights flooded heavily. Some poor areas scraped through. I live in a poor community within a rich area, but it magically didnt flood.

[Oskar_Z28]

Originally Posted by gwarnecke

About 70% of my old neighborhood was flooded following the reservoir release, and yet there were a handful of homes that flooded during the 2016 Tax Day Flood that were fine following Harvey (located "high", but near a couple of storm drains that got blocked by debris during the 2016 flood).

Agree - flood insurance should be considered table stakes for buying a home in Houston. There are many different mechanisms by which flooding can occur. My neighbors and I have learned this the hard way - will always carry flood insurance now.

You must be my neighbor . My other house in Spring branch flooded during Tax day flood (from drainage ditch backing up), but not Harvey. The house I live in flooded in Harvey from dam release, but never flooded before. Insurance made the rebuild easier.

[chris_ut]

Assuming that houses that didn't flood during any previous event will be underwater in 5 years is a bit extreme.

Originally Posted by snackdog

To be safe, you should assume the next flood will be within 5-10 years and will be worse than Harvey. Thus, homes and neighborhoods which didn't quite flood this time may be well under water next time. Your best bet is go for a fairly dry area and then pile on plenty of flood insurance unless the house is on stilts.

[CaseyLF]

Did Friendswood flood?

[Jack Lance]

Originally Posted by Sollaces

The POWERS THAT BE need to sticky your thread. Honest. So many are buying new homes, new to Houston. Lots of homes for sale.

The powers that be, meaning the moderators ?