New law gives Florida buyers, renters heads up on past flooding in their new homes
After decades of a 'buyer beware' policy at best, Floridians will finally gets a heads up if their new home has flooded in the past, thanks to a new Florida law Gov. Ron DeSantis signed into law on Friday.
It's an expansion of a law that kicked in last year, mandating home sellers — for the first time — to explicitly warn prospective buyers if the property has previously flooded. The new bill expands those protections to renters, mobile home owners and property developers.
'This was just to make sure that we were covering all people who were in a home, whether they were renting a home or a condo that they were made aware of the risks of flooding,' said Rep. Christine Huschofsky, a Democrat representing the Parkland area, one of the sponsors of the bipartisan bill that passed through Tallahassee unanimously.
Starting Oct. 1, landlords have to disclose past flooding to prospective renters. If the landlord doesn't give the tenant a heads up, and a flood causes 'substantial loss or damage' to the tenant's property, they can cancel their lease within 30 days and get their money back for any rent they paid in advance.
Rachel Rhode, manager of the Environmental Defense Fund's Climate Resilience Coasts and Watershed Initiative, was one of the environmental groups that helped push for the bill. She said the expanded protections were important in a state with so many new transplants, many of whom start out renting.
'In a state like Florida, I think renters are not often top of mind like they are in New York or elsewhere,' Rhode said. 'Renters still need to be protected as well.'
Experts say the best way to know if a property is going to flood in the future is if it has flooded in the past. But that information has proven tricky, if not impossible, for Floridians to learn before this law.
The bill also closes a loophole left in the initial version of the bill, a direct question for home sellers about whether or not the property had experienced flooding. The question was stripped from last year's bill at the last moment, dramatically watering it down and shrinking the number of homes it would apply to.
That loophole — and the lack of protections for Floridians seeking to live in non-flooded homes — was the subject of a Miami Herald series this year, Floods of Trouble. The Herald found that despite a growing number of properties at risk from flooding as climate change cranks up the dial on rainstorms and hurricanes, Florida fell behind other at-risk states in consumer protections for flood disclosure.
The new law helps fix that problem, but it still leaves home buyers at the mercy of the courts if their seller lies about previous flooding — a 'nightmare' issue for some coastal home buyers the Herald spoke with.
Rhode and other flood experts say this new bill is a big step toward fixing those issues, especially with its added accountability for landlords and mobile home park owners.
'We also really like that there's that accountability for the landlords. If there is damage to the property, it gives them a little bit of protection as well,' she said.
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