[mikeindeland]

I work in Palm Coast, and it seems pleasant enough. There's plenty of shopping and restaurants, and the beach is close by. Just be sure you get a good quote for homeowners insurance - it's astronomical in the coastal areas here. There are a lot of nice neighborhoods here.

[Fredesch]

Originally Posted by mikeindeland

I work in Palm Coast, and it seems pleasant enough. There's plenty of shopping and restaurants, and the beach is close by. Just be sure you get a good quote for homeowners insurance - it's astronomical in the coastal areas here. There are a lot of nice neighborhoods here.

The homeowners insurance in Palm Coast may be high due to potential flooding, there are canals to the intercoastal waterway all over Palm Coast which allows you to dock your boat in you backyard but means water is only 30' from your back door and only 2 or 3' below your house.

[Ms. Intelligence]

Palm Coast was a developer's nightmare gone wrong. I can't truly elaborate without be called silly names. Let me just finish by saying STAY AWAY!

[twowilldo]

Originally Posted by Fredesch

The homeowners insurance in Palm Coast may be high due to potential flooding, there are canals to the intercoastal waterway all over Palm Coast which allows you to dock your boat in you backyard but means water is only 30' from your back door and only 2 or 3' below your house.

The FEMA flood maps mark the majority of the canal areas as zones with increased risk of an 0.2% chance (X area) of flooding. The strips right against the ICW, Long Creek (a regulatory floodway) and Big Mulberry Branch show a 1% chance (AE area) of annual flood hazard. It doesn't look like the flood insurance is required in the X areas (yet).

Because we are considering this area seriously, we are investigating insurances and going into this with eyes wide open and are very aware of the risks of course. All things considered even with two-tenths of a percentage of an increase of flood risk, insurance costs to us (no mortgage) is slightly less than we are paying currently for a similar value/size home here in Colorado. I don't know if it is because of the hail risk and strong winds here? Our insurance agent wasn't able to determine the reason.

There are a few lower lying properties in the fringes of Palm Harbor that are around 3-4 ft. from high tide ASL. USGS topo maps we are using when identifying certain properties are showing us about 7-10 ft. from high tide ASL.

Do you live in this area Fredesch? Have you experienced really big jumps in insurances?

[twowilldo]

Originally Posted by Ms. Intelligence

Palm Coast was a developer's nightmare gone wrong. I can't truly elaborate without be called silly names. Let me just finish by saying STAY AWAY!

I promise not to call you by silly names! Please share what you know or you can PM me if that would help. Looking and listening to all opinions and would do the same for anyone looking to come here to the Denver metro area as well.

[Fredesch]

Originally Posted by twowilldo

The FEMA flood maps mark the majority of the canal areas as zones with increased risk of an 0.2% chance (X area) of flooding. The strips right against the ICW, Long Creek (a regulatory floodway) and Big Mulberry Branch show a 1% chance (AE area) of annual flood hazard. It doesn't look like the flood insurance is required in the X areas (yet).

Because we are considering this area seriously, we are investigating insurances and going into this with eyes wide open and are very aware of the risks of course. All things considered even with two-tenths of a percentage of an increase of flood risk, insurance costs to us (no mortgage) is slightly less than we are paying currently for a similar value/size home here in Colorado. I don't know if it is because of the hail risk and strong winds here? Our insurance agent wasn't able to determine the reason.

There are a few lower lying properties in the fringes of Palm Harbor that are around 3-4 ft. from high tide ASL. USGS topo maps we are using when identifying certain properties are showing us about 7-10 ft. from high tide ASL.

Do you live in this area Fredesch? Have you experienced really big jumps in insurances?

We live in Ormond-by-the-sea (zip 32176). We have Florida Peninsula homeowners insurance and haven't notice a jump in cost. We are still in the process of replacing our roof after Hurricane Matthew. In our area roofs and fences were primarily damaged. I believe Matthew was a category 3 when it went by us, and we didn't have flooding since it was low tide. Farther north, the wind speed was less but if it was high tide areas had local flooding. You probably can find video of streets in the Saint Augustine area, Georgia and South Carolina that had hurricane Matthew related flooding even though Matthew dropped to a category 1 as it moved north.

We have friends in Palm Coast that dock their 30' sailboat on a canal that adjoins their back yard. Well they don't really have a back yard just a pool and the canal. I think they were off sailing in the gulf when Mattew hit and don't remember what kind of damage they had.

[twowilldo]

Originally Posted by Fredesch

You probably can find video of streets in the Saint Augustine area, Georgia and South Carolina that had hurricane Matthew related flooding even though Matthew dropped to a category 1 as it moved north.

We've done exactly that, checked out videos. Obviously the A1A flooding was prominent, looked at some drone videos and drive arounds. To us it mostly looked like broken branches and tipped over trees, downed fences. Lots of aerials on Google earth indicate tarps on rooftops too.

We look at it like this, there is risk anywhere you go... here along Front Range hail can be very serious in late Spring and early summer. That seems to be the biggest problem. Our Honda Accord got it pretty bad (in downtown Durango of all places) about 3-4 years back and my mom's brand new Fit was totaled in SE Aurora two years ago from hail. High winds happen sometimes in Boulder County, wildfires, flooding in the canyons, avalanches that can cover the highways sometimes when CDOT cannot keep up blasting them because of heavy snowfall conditions. Heavy snow more often happens in the southern parts of Denver metro but a few months ago because of the wind, the drifts were higher than the hood of my Toyota FJ in the driveway and the ground was bare in other places. Tornadoes here are generally of the "cold" type so they aren't those monster thick things unless you get farther out to the eastern side of the state... but we do see funnel clouds almost every year. Sometimes they make it all the way down. In 1996, a tornado carried our neighbor's garden shed over our house and dropped it half a mile away, that one never made the news because it wasn't identified by an "official spotter" or law enforcement. We cowered in the crawlspace, those things really do sound like a train!

http://www.denverpost.com/2016/05/17...damage-claims/

[Fredesch]

It is great you all are looking into the costs of potential hazards and weighing your choices. We live near the beach and anything metal corrodes here, it is just part of living here. The average life of the outdoor AC unit is 7 years. We are replacing our garage door and the new door must be impact resistant and withstand wind speeds over 130 mph. Our sprinkler water smells like sulfur and stains concrete orange. But we love it here as we can walk to the beach in a 2 or 3 minutes. And likewise we can walk to the intercoastal waterway in 3 or 4 minutes.

I would avoid anything in a (non X) flood zone. And make sure you know what is and isn't covered by your homeowners insurance. Often water damage will only be covered if the water came into your house as rain, and they won't cover water that came in from a body of water including canals or even a puddle that forms in your yard regardless of how much rain was dumped by a hurricane.

[twowilldo]

^^^^ all good things to know, thank you Fredesch.

Seems like every time we are down visiting our friend in the Keys we are sanding, painting or replacing something. Last month it was the motor and electrical in his dumb waiter and some replacement lumber/hardware for the dock. A few months before that, he got a brand new AC/dehumidifying unit, wasn't cheap either. Yikes.

Our well is just over 1,000' deep here so we have the iron/rust issue and staining the fixtures with the water. We are changing over the filtration system to address that issue in a few months. We have a fix for getting out the yellowish iron stains that develop in porcelain plumbing fixtures, if you have that problem I can share it if interested. It's an odd method and we discovered it completely by chance, but it works pretty well.

Advice on insurance is appreciated also, thanks so much.

[Ms. Intelligence]

A google search will reveal the unfortunte truth behind what has happened to this area. Best of luck to you.