What is the Grandfather Rule on Your Flood Insurance?

Hello. Chris Greene here, the Flood Insurance Guru. Today, we're talking about the grandfather rule on your flood insurance policy. No, we're not talking about you spoiling your grandchildren, the number one golden rule of every grandparent. What we're talking about, particularly, is the grandfather laws when it comes to your National Flood Insurance Program policy.

Generally, there are two options you have when doing a grandfathering rule. What a grandfathering rule is, when it comes to the National Flood Insurance Program, it means that your property is in a zone that basically no longer exists. We're basically taking it back in time, hence the grandfather. So what this is, is you have a set of two options. Option one, when it comes to grandfathering, let's just say your flood zone is about to change to a high-risk flood zone from a preferred.

As long as you take out that flood insurance policy before the date of the map change, then your policy will be grandfathered in. Now it'll be grandfathered longterm, however, your rates will slowly increase over time to adjust to the new zone. But this option does give you time to adjust, generally several years.

Option number two is, let's just say your house was built in 1995. What happens is if you can prove that your home was within compliance when it was built then, then we can use these factors to grandfather your property back to the zone that it was built within in 1995. There are documentations that you do have to turn in, but these are generally the two ways that you can grandfather your property to that preferred zone.

If you have questions about flood insurance, please visit our website www.floodinsuranceguru, our Facebook page or YouTube Channel The Flood Insurance Guru, or give us a call 205-451-4294.