Two days ago I received a phone call from a fellow for whom we did an elevation certificate two or three months ago. He said the form had been sent to FEMA and they were content with the results of my work but now they need to know which of his numerous lots are the ones with the house on it. This made no sense. Upon further questioning he said that information had been passed on to him by his son's banker as he is deeding all of his property to his son. I asked which of the officers in that bank he was dealing with. Then told him I would talk directly with that fellow to make sure what was going on as I was pretty sure he didn't want to spend another $1000 to $1500 for no good reason.
Yesterday I managed to get the banker on the phone. Explained that I had received the mysterious call and didn't understand why a boundary survey was needed since he was deeding all of his land to the son and that shouldn't have anything to do with FEMA. So he started reading off of the message he had received from FEMA. Then the little light bulb over top of head suddenly lit up. I asked, "Did someone submit a LOMA application to FEMA?" "Yes. We did.", he replied. "Okay, but, instead of simply requesting the structure be removed, the form must have checked the box for an 'area' to be removed.", I said. He then asked, "So how does that make any difference." I spend the next 10 minutes explaining how things work in the real world and how FEMA expected to be provided a clear description of precisely what area, which happened to have a house on it, is eligible to be removed from the mapped flood plain. That is why they made the request that had made no sense to me. I further explained the added cost to the client to perform said boundary survey of the entire area above the BFE as a fraction of over 20 lots in an ancient subdivision that has been almost completely undeveloped in the 120 years since it was pencil-whipped on a piece of paper and for which there are only one or two survey records anywhere close. Mr. Banker decided he would resubmit the LOMA application with the "structure only" box checked this time.
It is unfortunate that the poor unsuspecting people of the world must assume that the "real estate experts" such as bankers, title people, appraisers, court house employees and such actually know what they are doing. Too often, that turns out to be untrue and, frequently, more expensive than necessary.
BTW, the area that could be excluded from the flood plain would be an odd shape ranging between about 20 feet and about 80 feet from the existing house on a parcel of about 20 acres and be varying fractions of probably three of the platted lots. There is no practical reason in the foreseeable future to do anything more than get the existing structure excluded.
