Washington’s flood insurance “relief” bill expires September 2017.
Good for taxpayers; scary for housing markets.

Flooded home1A while back Congress noticed the huge deficit caused from subsidized flood insurance rates and jacked them up to cover actual losses. (You know like a real insurance company.) Many homeowners’ rates tripled. The shouts were deafening. The resulting Homeowner Flood Insurance Affordability Act brought rates back down, but that ‘relief’ from reality expires next September.

Congress and the casualty insurance industry are looking at alternatives, but no matter how the costs of flooding are shared in the future, a lot more will fall on homeowners who live in America’s rapidly-expanding floodplain – and would-be buyers of those properties.