It Is a Desert and It Floods. How to Check Before You Buy.

People moving here from wetter places find this one genuinely hard to believe, and people touring in March have usually never seen it happen.

The valley gets very little rain, and when it does get rain it often arrives all at once onto ground that does not absorb it, with mountains on three sides funnelling it down. Water that falls on the edge of the valley ends up crossing the middle of it, and it moves fast.

None of which makes buying here risky. It makes checking the specific address a step you do not skip.

Drive any part of this valley and you will pass concrete channels and wide gravel corridors running between neighborhoods, sometimes landscaped, sometimes fenced, often with a trail alongside.

The concrete channels and gravel corridors you pass are washes, and they are there to carry water. Some are natural drainages that were left in place and improved. Some were built. Either way, a wash is drainage infrastructure rather than a greenbelt that happens to be empty.

Most of the year it is dry and it genuinely functions as open space. During a storm it is doing its job, and the job is moving a large volume of water quickly.

A house backing onto a wash often has a real advantage. No neighbor behind you, open outlook, sometimes a trail. People pay for that view and they are not wrong to. The point is to know what you are looking at, ask what it does in a storm, and find out where the property sits relative to it rather than assuming the fence is the whole story.

This takes about five minutes and almost nobody does it.

Look the address up on FEMA's flood map. FEMA publishes flood maps and you can search them by address. What you are looking for is the flood zone the parcel sits in. High-risk zones are generally lettered A or V with variations, and areas outside the high-risk zones are usually shown differently. Print or save what you find, with the date.

Ask the seller directly. Nevada's seller disclosure asks sellers about what they are aware of, and drainage and flooding are the kind of thing that belongs on it. I wrote about how that form works and what "aware" actually means in the disclosure article on this site.

Ask the neighbors. Somebody two doors down has lived through a monsoon season on that street and will tell you in thirty seconds what no document will.

Ask your lender early. If the property sits in a high-risk zone, your lender will generally require flood insurance as a condition of the loan. That is a real monthly cost and it needs to be in your numbers before you are emotionally committed, not after.

A standard homeowners policy does not cover flood. Not a reduced amount, not with a higher deductible. Flood is excluded and it is covered by a separate policy.

People find this out at the worst possible time, having assumed for years that "I have home insurance" covered it.

Flood cover is available separately, through the National Flood Insurance Program and through private carriers. Whether you need it, what it costs and what it covers are questions for a licensed insurance agent, and worth asking even when the property is not in a high-risk zone, because being outside the mapped high-risk area is not the same as water never reaching the house.

FEMA revises flood maps. A property's designation can change, in either direction, when a map is updated.

Two consequences worth holding onto. A seller telling you in good faith what the zone was when they bought may be describing an old map. And if you own here, a remapping can change whether your lender requires flood insurance, which is a cost that can appear without anything about your house changing at all.

When you check, read the current map rather than an old one, and note the date you checked.

Southern Nevada has spent decades building flood control infrastructure, which is what most of those channels and detention basins are. The system is substantial and it is the reason a storm that would have been serious in the valley's earlier years is usually managed now.

A system existing is not a reason to skip checking your address. It is the reason the washes are there, and understanding that they are working infrastructure is the point of this article.

The valley you tour in March is not the valley in late summer. The monsoon season generally runs through the hotter months, and a buyer who has only seen the place dry has only seen half of it.

You do not need to visit in a storm. You need to ask the question, check the map, and look at where the water would go from the property you are standing in. How to use a three-day house hunting trip covers what else to do with limited time on the ground.

The inspection is not a flood assessment. A home inspector looks at the house. What a home inspection actually turns up covers what you do get, and grading and drainage around the structure may well come up, but it is not the same as a flood zone determination.

Your association may have rules about the wash. If the property backs onto one, what you may build, plant or attach along that boundary is often controlled. What the HOA actually controls covers how much authority that is.

I am a Realtor. I am not an insurance agent, a floodplain manager or an engineer, and nothing here is insurance or engineering advice. I am not telling you what zone any property is in, whether you need flood insurance, or what it should cost.

What I will do is make sure the question gets asked on a property you are serious about, at the point in the deal where the answer still gives you choices.

Call 702-881-6562 or email JArendt658@gmail.com with the address. I will tell you what I know about the drainage around it and make sure the map check and the insurance conversation happen inside your due diligence window instead of after it.

---

John Arendt, Realtor, has sold homes across the Las Vegas valley for 20 years, in Henderson, Summerlin, Southern Highlands, Anthem, Boulder City and North Las Vegas.

John Arendt is a Realtor, not a licensed insurance agent or a floodplain professional, and nothing in this article is insurance, legal or engineering advice. Flood zone designations are parcel-specific and FEMA revises its maps over time. Always check the current map for the specific address and speak to a licensed insurance agent about cover.