[TheOtherHobbes]

Insurance companies in the UK have been discussing this for over a decade.

There have been some consequences. It's no longer possible to get buildings insurance or mortgages in certain flood prone areas.

This effectively makes them uninhabitable, because uninsured flood damage can easily bankrupt a house owner.

[simonh]

As a digression, I used to live in Shropshire and know of at least a few houses built close to rivers and streams that used to occasionally flood the ground floor. The buildings were set up to take this into account, with tiled floors and sturdy wooden furniture.

In one case I know well the old couple living there used to just chase the flood water out of the house with a running hose to clean it out. They sold the house to a young couple who redecorated the whole house and put carpets and stuffed furnishings on the ground floor. A few years later the whole lot was ruined, they sold and moved out. Apparently their neighbours tried to warn them.

[adwww]

> uninhabitable

Surely just unmortgageable?

[robotmay]

Which for the majority of the UK means unpurchasable. With high rents in many places it's getting extremely difficult for a lot of people to save enough even for a deposit on a house, let alone buy it outright.

Oddly I think refusing to mortgage homes on flood plains is actually a good call by the banks. The local councils are just building in whatever idiotic places they like, stripping hills of the foliage which absorbs water to put houses there, then putting even more houses below where all the water now has to flow.