Desjardins Group announced as of Feb. 1 it would no longer offer new mortgages for properties in “0-20 year” flood zones — where there is a five per cent chance of flooding in any given year — because of what it called the rising effect of climate change.
There are some exceptions: buyers can get financing for up to 65 per cent a home’s selling price if the previous owner had a Desjardins mortgage and the property has protective measures to prevent flooding. But the company’s decision has left mayors of low-lying towns worried that homeowners will be left with properties that no one will buy or that are massively devalued.
They shouldn’t be allowed to build in flood zones to start with. If they insist on building there, then they need to build the infrastructure to handle the water and bring that area out of the flood zone.
Yeah, the houses will not be “undervalued”
Houses on a floodplain were massively overvalued before, because no one ever thought about the risk. This is just putting them to their actual real value.