Selling a Memorial Villages Home With a Flood History: The Disclosure and the Records

What does the Texas seller's disclosure notice ask about flooding?

Texas Property Code Section 5.008(a) sets the general rule: a seller of residential real property comprising not more than one dwelling unit located in this state shall give to the purchaser of the property a written notice as prescribed by that section, or a written notice substantially similar to it which contains, at a minimum, all of the items in the prescribed notice. The Texas Real Estate Commission prepared its Seller's Disclosure Notice in accordance with Texas Property Code § 5.008(b), and the form itself says it replaces OP-H, the older name some readers still search for.

Item 6 in its current shape came from Senate Bill 339, passed by the 86th Texas Legislature to amend Section 5.008(b) of the Property Code. The act's caption reads that it relates to a seller's disclosure notice for residential property regarding floodplains, flood pools, floodways, or reservoirs. The amendment applies only to a contract for the sale of real property entered into on or after the act's effective date of 1 September 2019, and a contract entered into before that date is governed by the law in effect on the date the contract was entered into.

Item 6 asks whether the seller is aware of any of the following conditions, with Yes written where the seller is aware and No where the seller is not aware: present flood insurance coverage; previous flooding due to a failure or breach of a reservoir or a controlled or emergency release of water from a reservoir; and previous water penetration into a structure on the property due to a natural flood event.

Five location lines follow, answered the same way, with wholly or partly checked as applicable: located in a 100-year floodplain (Special Flood Hazard Area-Zone A, V, A99, AE, AO, AH, VE, or AR); in a 500-year floodplain (Moderate Flood Hazard Area-Zone X (shaded)); in a floodway; in a flood pool; and in a reservoir.

The statute prints its own definitions with that item. A 100-year floodplain is any area of land that is identified on the flood insurance rate map as a special flood hazard area, which is designated as Zone A, V, A99, AE, AO, AH, VE, or AR on the map; has a one percent annual chance of flooding, which is considered to be a high risk of flooding; and may include a regulatory floodway, flood pool, or reservoir. A 500-year floodplain is any area of land that is identified on the flood insurance rate map as a moderate flood hazard area, designated on the map as Zone X (shaded), and has a two-tenths of one percent annual chance of flooding, which is considered to be a moderate risk of flooding.

Three more definitions sit beside those. A flood pool is the area adjacent to a reservoir that lies above the normal maximum operating level of the reservoir and that is subject to controlled inundation under the management of the United States Army Corps of Engineers. A floodway is an area identified on the flood insurance rate map as a regulatory floodway, which includes the channel of a river or other watercourse and the adjacent land areas that must be reserved for the discharge of a base flood, also referred to as a 100-year flood, without cumulatively increasing the water surface elevation more than a designated height. A reservoir is a water impoundment project operated by the United States Army Corps of Engineers that is intended to retain water or delay the runoff of water in a designated surface area of land.

Item 7 asks whether the seller has ever filed a claim for flood damage to the property with any insurance provider, including the National Flood Insurance Program. A footnote on the form adds that homes in high risk flood zones with mortgages from federally regulated or insured lenders are required to have flood insurance, and that FEMA encourages homeowners in high risk, moderate risk and low risk flood zones to buy coverage for the structures and the personal property within them. Item 8 asks whether the seller has ever received assistance from FEMA or the U.S. Small Business Administration for flood damage to the property.

Two features of items 7 and 8 are where a reader goes wrong. Both say ever, so they reach back across the seller's ownership rather than asking about a policy in force today. And each one ends with an explain line, with room to attach additional sheets as necessary, so a Yes carries a written explanation with it. Item 6 carries the same instruction: if the answer to any of the above is yes, explain.

The notice opens by saying what it is. It is a disclosure of seller's knowledge of the condition of the property as of the date signed by seller, it is no substitute for any inspections or warranties the purchaser may wish to obtain, and it is no warranty of any kind by the seller or the seller's agents.

Why does the notice ask about a release from a reservoir?

Item 6's second line names a controlled or emergency release of water from a reservoir, and the statute's definition of a reservoir is tied to a project operated by the United States Army Corps of Engineers. Releases of that kind have happened in Harris County.

The Harris County Flood Control District wrote a page about the reservoirs during the storm in 2017, and the account below is the district's own. Pools behind the Addicks and Barker reservoirs, operated by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, began rising on 25 August. Reservoir gates were opened on 28 August, releasing stormwater into Buffalo Bayou. The district recorded that some streets and homes downstream of the reservoirs flood when the combined release rate from the reservoirs exceeds approximately 4,000 cubic feet per second, and that those releases resulted in out-of-banks flooding in neighborhoods along Buffalo Bayou, the receiving bayou from the two federal reservoirs.

The point for a seller is narrower than the storm. An owner answering item 6 is being asked about a category the legislature wrote with events of that kind in mind, and the line is answered from what the owner knows about this property: Yes where the owner is aware, No where the owner is not, with the explain line completed where the answer is Yes.

What do you write when you do not know the answer?

Texas Property Code Section 5.008(d) carries the standard and its limit in a single provision. The notice is completed to the best of the seller's belief and knowledge as of the date it is completed and signed by the seller, and where the information required by the notice is unknown to the seller, the seller indicates that fact on the notice and by that act is in compliance with the section.

The measure is the seller's own belief and knowledge, which is a wider thing than a tidy paperwork trail. An owner holding the claim record, the assistance letter or the repair invoices knows what those documents show, and the explain line is where that gets written down. Where an owner does not know the answer, indicating that fact on the notice, rather than guessing at one, is what the statute describes.

Timing is set in Section 5.008(f). The notice shall be delivered by the seller to the purchaser on or before the effective date of an executory contract binding the purchaser to purchase the property, and where a contract is entered without the seller providing the notice required by that section, the purchaser may terminate the contract for any reason within seven days after receiving the notice.

The contract mirrors that at Paragraph 7B of the One to Four Family Residential Contract (Resale), which carries three boxes and instructs the parties to check one box only. Box (2) is the box for a notice due after the Effective Date: the parties write in a number of days for delivery; where the buyer does not receive the Seller's Disclosure Notice, the buyer may terminate this contract at any time prior to the closing and the earnest money will be refunded to the buyer; and where the seller delivers it, the buyer may terminate for any reason within 7 days after receiving it or prior to the closing, whichever first occurs, with the earnest money refunded.

Because the notice is signed as of a date, gathering the records before the house goes on the market is what allows items 6, 7 and 8 to be answered out of documents rather than out of memory.

Which sales does the notice not apply to, and what does an exemption leave in place?

Texas Property Code Section 5.008(e) opens by saying the section does not apply to a transfer, and it lists eleven of them. Four are the entries a seller with a flood history plausibly meets, in the statute's own words: a transfer pursuant to a court order or foreclosure sale; by a fiduciary in the course of the administration of a decedent's estate, guardianship, conservatorship, or trust; from one co-owner to one or more other co-owners; and of a new residence of not more than one dwelling unit which has not previously been occupied for residential purposes. The remaining entries on the list are separate questions.

The contract records the outcome at Paragraph 7B(3), which reads that the Seller is not required to furnish the Seller's Disclosure Notice under the Texas Property Code. Readers weighing those transfers alongside the As Is contract language can go on to this site's page on selling a Memorial Villages home as-is after a death.

An exemption is an exemption from one form. Texas Occupations Code Section 1101.652(b)(3) lets the commission discipline a license holder who, while engaged in real estate brokerage, makes a material misrepresentation to a potential buyer concerning a significant defect, including a latent structural defect, known to the license holder that would be a significant factor to a reasonable and prudent buyer in making a decision to purchase real property, and Section 1101.652(b)(4) reaches a license holder who fails to disclose a defect of that kind that is known to the license holder. The federal notice duty described below sits in 42 U.S.C. Section 5154a and turns on its own conditions, and none of the transfers listed in Section 5.008(e) touches it.

Whether a particular sale sits inside one of those transfers is a legal question, and the attorney working on the sale is who answers it.

What does Texas law do about a seller who knew and did not tell?

The Texas Business and Commerce Code Chapter 17 Deceptive Trade Practices-Consumer Protection Act declares false, misleading, or deceptive acts or practices in the conduct of any trade or commerce unlawful. Section 17.46(b) says the term includes, but is not limited to, the acts it then lists, except as provided in Subsection (d), whose content this page does not set out. Section 17.46(b)(24) is the failure-to-disclose entry, and it carries two limbs that always travel together: the information was known at the time of the transaction, and the failure to disclose it was intended to induce the consumer into a transaction the consumer would not otherwise have entered.

Two exemptions decide whether the act reaches a transaction at all. Section 17.49(g) exempts a cause of action arising from a transaction, a project, or a set of transactions relating to the same project, involving total consideration by the consumer of more than $500,000, other than a cause of action involving a consumer's residence, and that closing clause is the part that matters on a house somebody buys to live in. Section 17.49(i) exempts a claim against a person licensed as a broker or salesperson under Chapter 1101, Occupations Code, arising from an act or omission by that person while acting as a broker or salesperson, and then carves out three things, the second of which is a failure to disclose information in violation of Section 17.46(b)(24).

Section 17.50(b)(1) states what a prevailing consumer may obtain: the amount of economic damages found by the trier of fact, with damages for mental anguish and up to three times the amount of economic damages where the trier of fact finds the conduct was committed knowingly, and mental anguish damages with up to three times the amount of damages for mental anguish and economic damages where it finds the conduct was committed intentionally. Section 17.565 requires an action to be commenced within two years after the date the act or practice occurred, or within two years after the consumer discovered or in the exercise of reasonable diligence should have discovered it, and allows a 180-day extension where the plaintiff proves the delay was caused by the defendant's knowingly engaging in conduct solely calculated to induce the plaintiff to refrain from or postpone commencing the action.

The license holder duty above comes from the Texas Occupations Code, and the rest of this section from the Texas Business and Commerce Code. Describing statutes and promulgated forms is a different thing from advising on one sale, and that advice comes from an attorney the seller retains.

Does a duty to carry flood insurance follow the house to the buyer?

One federal duty sits on the transferor, and it starts with a condition. Where federal disaster relief assistance made available in a flood disaster area was provided, prior to the date on which the property is transferred, for repair, replacement or restoration of the property, and that assistance was conditioned upon obtaining flood insurance in accordance with applicable Federal law, 42 U.S.C. Section 5154a(b)(1) requires the transferor to notify the transferee in writing, not later than the date on which the transfer occurs, of the requirements to obtain flood insurance if the property is not so insured as of that date and to maintain it. The same paragraph requires that written notification to be contained in the documents evidencing the transfer of ownership. Section 5154a(b)(3) is the condition that decides whether any of it reaches a given property.

Section 5154a(b)(2) attaches a consequence to a failure to notify, and three further things have to happen after the transfer before it bites: the transferee fails to obtain or maintain flood insurance in accordance with applicable Federal law with respect to the property, the property is damaged by a flood disaster, and Federal disaster relief assistance is provided for the repair, replacement or restoration of the property as a result of that damage. Where all three occur, the transferor is required to reimburse the Federal Government in an amount equal to the amount of the Federal disaster relief assistance provided with respect to the property.

One sentence of 42 U.S.C. Section 4012a is worth reading with its scope attached, and it is quoted below. That sentence sits inside Section 4012a(a), the subsection governing federal financial assistance for acquisition or construction purposes in any area identified by the Administrator as having special flood hazards and in which the sale of flood insurance has been made available under the National Flood Insurance Act of 1968.

The policy addresses the handover itself. The Standard Flood Insurance Policy Dwelling Form at 44 CFR Part 61 says the insured may assign the policy in writing when transferring title of the property to someone else, except where the policy insures only personal property or where it insures a building under construction, and that the policy cannot be changed, nor any of its provisions waived, without the express written consent of the Federal Insurance Administrator. For a seller, the practical reading is short: the paperwork travels, so it belongs on the table early.

What will the buyer's lender require?

One regulator's version is worth reading, because it is the version a seller meets through the buyer's lender. 12 CFR 339.2 defines a designated loan as a loan secured by a building or mobile home that is located or to be located in a special flood hazard area in which flood insurance is available under the Act. Under 12 CFR 339.3, an institution the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation supervises shall not make, increase, extend or renew a designated loan unless the building and any personal property securing the loan is covered by flood insurance for the term of the loan, in an amount at least equal to the lesser of the outstanding principal balance of the designated loan or the maximum limit of coverage available for that type of property under the Act, and that coverage is limited to the building and the personal property securing the loan rather than the land.

Those rules bind institutions the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation supervises. The statute behind them directs each Federal entity for lending regulation to issue a regulation of the same kind, so a buyer's lender may be working from another agency's version of the same rule, and the same statute directs regulated lending institutions to accept private flood insurance where the coverage meets the requirement.

12 CFR 339.9 adds a notice. Where such an institution makes, increases, extends or renews a loan secured by a building located in a special flood hazard area, it shall mail or deliver a written notice to the borrower and to the servicer in all cases, whether or not flood insurance is available under the Act for the collateral securing the loan. Two of the contents the rule requires are a warning, in a form approved by the Administrator of FEMA, that the building is or will be located in a special flood hazard area, and a description of the flood insurance purchase requirements set forth in section 102(b) of the Flood Disaster Protection Act of 1973, as amended; the borrower gets the notice within a reasonable time before the completion of the transaction.

One line in that part lands on a seller. Under 12 CFR 339.9(e), instead of providing the notice itself, the institution may obtain satisfactory written assurance from a seller that, within a reasonable time before the completion of the sale, the seller has provided that notice to the purchaser, and the institution keeps a record of the assurance for as long as it owns the loan.

The Harris County Flood Control District puts the everyday version plainly: official floodplain determinations are made by a mortgage lender or insurance agent and are based on the Flood Insurance Rate Map for your city or county, and mortgage lenders also have the authority to require flood insurance for structures located outside a mapped 1 percent floodplain or a coastal floodplain.

Where do the flood answers for one address come from?

The Harris County Flood Control District's Flood Education Mapping Tool gives information about the boundaries of mapped floodplains in Harris County relative to residences, businesses and other structures. The district says the floodplains it shows are the ones delineated on the Federal Emergency Management Agency's Flood Insurance Rate Map for Harris County, while the tool itself is not the effective map. It began as a mapping tool for the Tropical Storm Allison Recovery Project, launched shortly after Tropical Storm Allison struck Harris County in June 2001.

The zone for a given address comes from the current Flood Insurance Rate Map and from any elevation certificate the property has. 44 CFR 59.1 defines that map as an official map of a community on which the Federal Insurance Administrator has delineated both the special hazard areas and the risk premium zones applicable to the community, and defines the base flood as the flood having a one percent chance of being equalled or exceeded in any given year. An area of special flood hazard, a phrase the same section treats as synonymous with special flood hazard area, is the land in the flood plain within a community subject to a 1 percent or greater chance of flooding in any given year.

An Elevation Certificate is an official record that certifies the elevation of the lowest finished floor, adjacent land or location of the mechanical equipment of a structure in relation to the Base Flood Elevation, for a structure located in a mapped 1 percent floodplain. The district says it may be used to support a reduction in the cost of flood insurance, and that a licensed land surveyor or licensed professional engineer must be hired to prepare an Elevation Certificate. That is the practical answer to who has to be hired for one.

A Letter of Map Amendment is the route where an owner can demonstrate that a structure is incorrectly mapped in a 1 percent or coastal floodplain, or that it is elevated above the Base Flood Elevation. Five conditions travel with it: FEMA charges no fee to review the application; the applicant may need to hire a licensed land surveyor or licensed professional engineer for the technical information; FEMA typically makes a final determination within 30 to 60 days; submitting an application guarantees nothing about the outcome; and the lending institution retains the right to require flood insurance anyway.

A buyer arrives with more than a map, because the district publishes what the map leaves out. A Flood Insurance Rate Map does not identify risks from street flooding caused by roadside ditches and storm sewers exceeding their capacity, or from sheet flow, which is water traveling over land to reach a bayou, and the district puts those two categories at half or more of the flooding that occurs in Harris County. It records that 65 percent of the area that flooded during Tropical Storm Allison in 2001 was not in a mapped floodplain, and that approximately one-fourth of all flood insurance claims occur in areas outside a mapped 1 percent floodplain. A reader working the same checks from the buyer's side can go on to this site's page on address-level flood due diligence in the Memorial Villages.

What is known about what a flood history does to price?

No percentage below measures what a flood history does to the price of one home, so none should be read as a discount for a house that has flooded.

Freddie Mac's Research Note of September 2020 measured something narrower. It examined Harris County and the City of Houston using single-family property transaction data for properties sold between 2016 and 2018, a period over which homes in Harris County sold for an average of $321,000, and it used a hedonic model in a difference-in-difference framework. It found that homes in the 100-year floodplain sold for 2.3 percent less in Harris County even before Hurricane Harvey, that after the storm floodplain homes sold for a further 3.1 percent less than other homes while Harris County prices overall rose 2.5 percent, and that the total floodplain discount reached 5.5 percent.

Read those percentages for what they measure: location in a mapped floodplain, rather than a particular house's flood history. The note attributes part of the discount to the cost of mandatory periodic flood insurance premiums in the 100-year floodplain being capitalized into home prices, and the county-wide average sale price the study worked from is nothing like this market's, so the figures are evidence that the market prices mapped flood risk rather than a number to apply to a Memorial Villages house.

What sets the number for one house is closed sales of similar age, lot size and condition inside the same village. A buyer handed the claim record, the elevation certificate and the repair documents is pricing a known thing rather than an unknown one. For a number on the house itself, request a Memorial Villages home valuation from this site's valuation page.

What belongs in the file before the house goes on the market?

Start with the flood insurance policy and its declarations page, because item 6 asks about present flood insurance coverage and because the Dwelling Form can be assigned in writing on a transfer of title.

Add the claim record with any insurance provider, including the National Flood Insurance Program, because item 7 asks ever. Add any FEMA or Small Business Administration assistance letter, because item 8 asks ever and because the federal transfer notice turns on whether that assistance was conditioned upon obtaining flood insurance.

Any elevation certificate and any Letter of Map Amendment the property has belong in the same folder, along with the repair invoices themselves, since item 6's explain line is answered in writing.

The village holds a record of its own, and there is a reason it exists. Under the federal floodplain management criteria at 44 CFR 60.3, a participating community requires permits for all proposed construction or other development so that it can determine whether the work is proposed within a flood-prone area, and where base flood elevation data are used within Zone A it obtains the elevation of the lowest floor of all new and substantially improved structures and maintains a record of that information. Which of those minimum requirements binds a particular community depends, in the section's own words, on the amount of technical data the Federal Insurance Administrator has formally provided to it.

Substantial improvement means work costing 50 percent or more of the market value of the structure before the start of construction, and it includes structures that have incurred substantial damage regardless of the actual repair work performed, with substantial damage defined as damage of any origin whose repair cost would equal or exceed 50 percent of market value before the damage occurred. The term leaves out two things: a project to correct existing violations of state or local health, sanitary or safety code specifications identified by the local code enforcement official and minimum necessary to assure safe living conditions, and an alteration of a historic structure that will not preclude its continued designation as one. The federal criteria bind the community rather than the owner, so the village is who to ask what it holds for the address.

Texas Occupations Code Section 1958.154 covers the certificate of mold remediation, and it makes it the property owner's duty on a sale to provide the buyer a copy of each certificate issued for the property during the five years preceding the sale. The One to Four Family Residential Contract (Resale) repeats that duty at Paragraph 6.E(11) for a property that has been remediated for mold.

The file matters partly because there are few recent sales to price against: 204 homes sold across the six villages in the trailing twelve months as of October 2026. If you are preparing to sell, the questions to put to a Memorial Villages listing agent belong in the same conversation as the file, and where the house has already been on the market once, that file is what a second listing starts from.

What can this page not tell you?

The zone for the address: read it off the current Flood Insurance Rate Map, with any elevation certificate the property has beside it. Whether a particular sale falls inside one of the Section 5.008(e) transfers: a question for the reader's own attorney. Whether the federal transfer notice applies: that turns on whether assistance was provided before the transfer and was conditioned upon obtaining flood insurance, and it is answered from the assistance file rather than from memory.

What the village's floodplain administrator holds for the address, and what the village requires on a repair, comes from that village's own office. What the buyer's particular lender will require comes from that lender, since the rule set out above binds institutions one federal agency supervises and every lender may ask for more. For what a flood history does to the price of this house, the substitute is closed sales of similar age, lot size and condition inside the same village.

Form numbers change without notice, so take the Seller's Disclosure Notice from the current version on TREC's own form page on the day you fill it in.

Send Paige Martin the address and what the house has been through, and ask which of these documents the file is missing.