FEMA published a new Elevation Certificate recently. Last years update still had 2022 on the bottom of the cover page and the new version has 2023. I haven't had time to investigate what other changes they may have made.
Folks are still having trouble downloading the new form. Typically when you click on the link to download it, you get a page that says "Please Wait" at the top and then the form never downloads. In Chrome, when I get the Please Wait page, I click one of the Adobe links in the paragraphs below and suddenly a blue bar will appear across the top of the page with a button that says "Desktop" on the right end of the bar. Once I click the Desktop button on the blue bar it will open the form in Adobe and allow me to fill it in or save a copy.
Optional Workaround: If you copy the link from FEMA then open Adobe, click File, then Open, and paste the link into the file name field at the bottom of the page it will open the Elevation Certificate without having to deal with the stupid "Please Wait" screen.
I save a copy on my server so I only have to deal with their nonsense once. Good Luck.
Yes, it's a PITA to even get the new form and using it is even harder. It will not work with Bluebeam, I could only get it to work for me by downloading the adobe reader. Talk about progress!!!
I was told it was the same, just "finally officially accepted" in fall of '23. I'm not certain that is correct, but each have the identifier and expiration date:
OMB Control No. 1660-0008
Expiration Date: 06/30/2026
Just spent hrs filling the new form. A 1 hr task into a 4 hr task:
Could not drag/drop photos. Requires licensed version. Ok, I'll rent for a month ($24)
Purchase Adobe. (create profile; payment; verify profile; 2nd step verification; install; scan QR code: install again ... 45 min of bs)
after all that Adobe would not accept the photo images. (jpg format)
Convert pdf to MS Word. Test if Word accepts photos.Yeah! it does. Fill out the form in clunky Word.
In MS Word the check boxes on the form cannot be filled. Create a shape and copy/paste into the check boxes.
After all that I realized most cost efficient (within budget) way to complete a FEMA cert is by hand and scissors/glue the photos, like we did in 1985.
FEMA needs to make an Certificate independent of 3rd party blackmail. And stop moving backwards.
I've had issues with photos on past versions as well. Sometimes Acrobat doesn't like the files. I resize my images to get them under the 300k recommendation. I typically use Windows Photo but if Acrobat complains, I'll switch to Paint or do a save-as to a different file type (jpg to png or jpeg for example).
