In Long Beach, Island Park, Oceanside and Freeport the questions that decide whether a house is a good buy are mostly about water — where it has been, where it will go, and what was done about it.
In 2012 the western bays of southern Nassau saw record coastal flooding that went above FEMA's hundred-year base flood elevation. A great many houses down here were repaired, raised, or both. The quality of that work is worth establishing.
Lifting a house is major structural work and it is not always finished as carefully as it is begun.
Water leaves after a couple of weeks. What it did to the fabric of a house does not.
Flood zone is drawn street by street, not town by town. Long Beach, Island Park and the canal streets in Freeport are largely Zone AE. True VE — the wave-action zone — is a narrow band on the Long Beach oceanfront and out in the bay. Inland Freeport and central Oceanside are Zone X, outside the high-risk area altogether. Two houses a few streets apart can sit in different zones, so check yours on FEMA's map rather than assuming from the ZIP code.
An elevation certificate records how the building sits relative to the base flood elevation. Since FEMA moved to Risk Rating 2.0 the NFIP no longer requires one, but it can still lower a premium where FEMA's own elevation model underestimates the house. It is issued by a licensed land surveyor, engineer or architect, and your insurer sets the rate. A home inspector does neither.
What Lou can do is notice things. In an AE zone, enclosed space below the flood elevation is normally expected to have flood openings. In a VE zone that space has to be free of obstruction, or built with breakaway walls, lattice or screening — and where breakaway walls are used, the residential code expects openings in those too. Whether any of it is there is worth knowing before you own it.
Get the elevation certificate before you get to the table. Lou will tell you what the house itself is telling you.
Not sure yet? Read what New York requires of your inspector or see a real report.
Real photographs from Lou's own inspections, chosen because they show a building component and nothing that identifies a property or an owner.
Long Island, the five boroughs and Westchester. The seven areas below each have their own page, because a house in Levittown and a brownstone in Brooklyn fail in completely different ways.
Locator diagram, not a survey. The dark marker is Wantagh, where Lou is based.