Grandfathering for Flood Insurance will be available for Certain Winthrop MA Properties!
Posted on Mon, Feb 01, 2010
In the past few months, many Winthrop homeowners received tough news from their mortgage lenders, that they were newly required to buy flood insurance. This was due to FEMA having issued new flood maps to the town, and requiring federally backed mortgage lenders to now require flood insurance on their properties that have now moved into a high risk flood zone.
We are pleased to announce that FEMA has issued a Letter of Map Revision. What the letter states is that Winthrop is going to go back to the OLD map dated 1992, and we consider this very good news. What this means is recently affected property owners will be able to go to their mortgage lenders with the LOMR and get the requirement for flood insurance removed.
HOWEVER, we strongly encourage these same homeowners to convert those High Risk Policies to Preferred Risk policies. This would “Grandfather” you in for flood, and prepare you for when the Winthrop maps are eventually reissued.
Elliot Whittier President, Steve Roy stated, “We have been working hard to get this looked at. We have always maintained that not enough time has been given for all of us to understand this information, and proper outreach on the matter of “Grandfathering” into flood, to buy before the map change, did need to be done.”
As an example; for those that were able to Grandfather and buy flood insurance before the 9/25/2009 effective date, the lower rate would apply for the first year of approximately $400, instead of approximately $2000 or $3000 if purchased after the map change. The second and subsequent year(s) of grandfathering would experience an interim increase but not nearly as much as buying flood insurance AFTER a map change.
We are strongly encouraging all property owners to contact their home insurance agent, get the facts, and consider buying a Preferred Risk Flood Insurance Policy.
Click here for a link to the LOMR letter dated Feb 1, 2010 describing the change for Winthrop.
For questions, please call Chris Millerick, Marketing & Sales at Elliot Whittier, at 857-816-4935