beachfront properties

You’re looking for waterfront homes and St. Pete sounds like heaven, and it can be. Living at the water can be fun in the sun. Beach, boats, jet skis, sun. Sounds great, but there are things that you need to consider before buying your St. Pete waterfront home.

Start with flooding and hurricanes

You’ll need insurance for each. The west coast of Florida may not happen as often as the east coast, but they happen and often enough. Coverage for floods and hurricanes are not part of homeowners policies. If there is a hurricane and/or flooding, your homeowners won’t cover the damage. Having all 3 policies is necessary, and a necessary expense to consider.

Erosion

Those floods and hurricanes also cause erosion. Whether your home is beachfront or just waterfront, erosion changes your property. If you benefit from eroded shorelines by being the depository, great for you, but what if you’re the property losing beach or waterfront? It changes your property value, and not for the better.

Appreciates more

Keep in mind that while beachfront or waterfront property is more expensive, it also appreciates more than the less expensive properties further from the beach, or in communities without beachfront or waterfront. Whether you want to purchase a property as an investment or as your home, you never want to lose value.

Home inspection

Make sure that you have a home inspection by someone who is very familiar with waterfront and beachfront properties. They have special issues with water, humidity and salt damage beyond the usual home owning issues. Also get yourself familiar with ways to protect the home you’re looking to make your own from those same issues.

Don’t be afraid to make a waterfront home in St. Pete your own. Just know what you’ll be getting into!

If you are thinking about purchasing a St. Pete Waterfront home, give The Deb Ward Team a call today! 727-410-0336

If you are looking for homes in the Tampa area you know that their proximity to water is close. Not only that but hurricanes can be an issue with causing floods. So, should flooding be a worry while you are house shopping? Let’s just say that you should keep it as a checkbox on the list of items to consider.

Intercoastal or beachfront properties

For the most part it’s obvious that there are lots of coastal properties that need flood insurance. If you’re beachfront or a bay intercoastal front property then yes, you’ll most likely need flood insurance. There are also inland areas that have the potential for flooding problems in stormy weather due to tidal surges from the Gulf of Mexico or Tampa Bay. However, there are plenty of properties that are high enough that they don’t require flood insurance.

The best way to be sure depends on where the property or properties you are looking at happen to be located. If it’s in Hillsborough County they have a website that will allow you to enter the street address of a home to see where it falls on the flood zone map:

http://hillsboroughcounty.org/en/residents/property-owners-and-renters/homeowners-and-neighborhoods/find-my-flood-zone#/

The site also has an explanation of which zones require what

Pinellas County doesn’t have that, but you can get an idea from the FEMA website, which has flood zone lists for every state.

In Pasco County their county property appraiser has included flood zone/flood insurance requirement information with each property appraisal. The cool thing with this is that you can view a particular property and have the computer “paint” in any flood zones that might exist.

Go to http://pascopa.com and click on record search, enter the street address for the property in question and get the tax id number for the property. At the top of the page you will see a link that says Show Map. Click that and use the drop-down menus to select additional layers and add the layers for FEMA Flood zones.

Why worry when you can find out for sure?