The search shows the property is at risk of flooding

Treat it as three questions rather than one. Flood risk affects whether you can borrow, whether you can insure, and whether you can sell — and those are answered by three different people, none of them your conveyancer. The thing that makes it urgent is the order of events: all three have to be settled before exchange, because after exchange you are committed whatever the answers turn out to be.

From the e-ROT archive

This scenario is drawn from Report on Title material dealing with this specific circumstance.

Lexsure master Report on Title paragraph: Flood Risk · See the wording

Insurance is the question that decides the others

Get quotes, in writing, for this address, before you exchange. Not an estimate, not a comparison site figure for the postcode — an actual quotation naming the property.

The reason it comes first is that a lender will require buildings insurance acceptable to it, so an insurance answer you cannot get is a mortgage you cannot draw down. Ask what the premium is, what the flood excess is, and whether flood is covered at all; a policy that excludes flood is not the same as a policy you can use.

Ask the seller what they currently pay and with whom. An existing policy on reasonable terms is the most useful single fact available, and it is free to ask for.

What your conveyancer can and cannot tell you

They can tell you what the search says, what the seller has disclosed, and what it means legally. They cannot tell you whether the house will flood. Interpreting a technical flood report is a surveyor's job or a specialist's, and the Lexsure wording below says so plainly.

That division is worth understanding rather than resenting. A flood report is a model output, built from national data, generally without anyone visiting the property — which is exactly why someone who has been to the house should look at it.

The things people assume and should not

That high ground means safe. It does not. Surface water flooding depends on drainage and rainfall rather than on altitude, and the insurance difficulties follow the risk rating rather than the contour line.

That no history means no risk. Flood models are forward-looking and climate projections point one way. Premiums that are affordable now may not be in ten years.

That a leaseholder is insulated. Where the landlord insures the building, a flood that becomes an uninsured risk can leave the leaseholders liable to make good the damage, depending on what the lease says.

Your lender and flood cover

A mortgage offer carries a requirement to insure the property on terms the lender accepts. Where flood risk makes cover expensive, restricted or unavailable, that requirement is where the transaction stops — not at any judgement the lender makes about flooding itself.

Lenders differ in what they will accept: the treatment of flood exclusions, high excesses and specialist insurers is not uniform.

The Lexsure Lender Archive holds the current and historic answers lender by lender.

Research lender requirements → Lexsure Lender Archive

Flood Risk

Master precedent Lexsure e-ROTScope General flood adviceWord count 81Status Current master paragraph

If the property is on high ground, this does not exclude the possibility of flooding and any difficulties in obtaining buildings Insurance.

It is important that you conduct the suggested investigations as early in the transaction as possible, and in any case before exchange of contracts.

I would add that we are not qualified to give advice on flood risk or interpret technical flood reports and therefore it is essential you discuss this with your surveyor or an appropriately qualified expert. …

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