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.
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.