For years, a New York seller who did not want to fill out the Property Condition Disclosure Statement had a simple way out. You skipped the form and handed the buyer a $500 credit at closing. Plenty of attorneys treated it as the default.
That option is gone, and the thing it was replaced with is aimed squarely at Long Island.
What changed on March 20, 2024
New York amended the Property Condition Disclosure Statement effective March 20, 2024. The New York State Bar Association covered the change the day it went into effect, and it was only the second amendment to the form in more than two decades.
Two things happened at once.
The $500 opt-out credit was eliminated. In practice that makes the disclosure statement something you complete rather than something you buy your way out of.
And a block of flood questions was added. According to the Bar Association’s summary, sellers are now asked whether all or part of the property is in a FEMA-designated floodplain, whether it is in a special flood hazard area, whether it is in a moderate flood hazard area, whether it is subject to a flood insurance requirement, whether the seller has received FEMA, Small Business Administration or other federal disaster assistance for flood damage, whether flood insurance is in place on the property, whether there is a FEMA elevation certificate, and whether the seller has ever filed an insurance claim for flood damage.
The practical effect is simple. Water history that used to live in a homeowner’s memory now lives on a signed form.
Attorneys at MCCM Law summarized the same change and noted that the section heading in the statute was retitled to reflect the removal of the credit. How that shakes out in your specific deal is a question for your own attorney, and you should ask it before the house goes on the market rather than after.
Why this lands harder here than anywhere else in the state
Long Island is a sandbar with 118 miles of shoreline and a lot of houses on it.
The South Shore communities from the Rockaways through Long Beach, Freeport, Massapequa, Babylon, Lindenhurst, Bay Shore and out through the barrier beaches are the obvious ones. The North Shore has its own low-lying harbor neighborhoods. So do the creeks and canals that cut into both coasts.
Then there is Sandy. In 2012 the storm pushed water into neighborhoods that had never taken water before, and a very large number of Nassau and Suffolk homeowners went through the FEMA and SBA process. Those two facts now appear as two separate questions on a form you have to sign.
A claim filed thirteen years ago is still a claim. A grant received in 2013 is still federal disaster assistance. There is no quiet expiration on either one.
What a buyer does with that information
A retail buyer reacts to a flood disclosure in roughly this order.
They ask their insurance agent what a policy costs, and that is where a lot of deals slow down. Flood insurance in a special flood hazard area is not an optional line item for most buyers, because a federally backed mortgage on a home in that zone generally comes with a mandatory flood insurance requirement, and premiums vary enormously based on elevation.
Then they ask whether there is an elevation certificate. If the answer is no, the number their agent quotes gets worse, because without one the carrier has less to work with.
Then they start asking what you did about the water the last time it came in. If the repairs were permitted and closed out, that is a conversation. If they were not, you have just walked into a second problem on top of the first, and open permits on Long Island have a way of surfacing at exactly the wrong moment. We wrote about that separately in selling a house with code violations in Nassau or Suffolk County.
A meaningful share of deals die somewhere in that sequence. Not because the house is bad, but because the buyer is making a thirty-year decision about an insurance cost they cannot pin down.
The elevation question nobody wants to answer
If your house took water in Sandy and was never raised, you are in the hardest category to sell retail.
Raising a house on Long Island is a serious project. It is engineering, permits, a general contractor, months of displacement, and a bill that commonly reaches six figures. Grant programs have come and gone over the years and have not reached everyone who needed them.
What sellers in that position usually discover is that the market prices the unraised house as if the work still has to be done, which it does. You do not get credit for a house that stayed dry in the last three storms. You get priced against the cost of the next one.
That is a frustrating thing to absorb when the house is paid off and you have lived in it for forty years. It is also the actual market, and planning around it beats arguing with it.
Where a cash sale fits
We buy houses across Nassau and Suffolk, flood zone included, and the reason sellers in these neighborhoods call us is usually not the price. It is the certainty.
A cash sale takes the two hardest variables out of the deal. There is no lender, so there is no mandatory flood insurance requirement to satisfy before closing and no underwriter deciding at the last minute that the elevation certificate is a condition. And there is no financed buyer whose own insurance quote can blow up the contract in week five.
We also are not going to ask you to repair water damage first. We buy Long Island homes that need major repairs in whatever condition they are in, and that includes a basement that has been wet more than once.
What we do ask is that you tell us the truth about the water. Not because we will walk, but because an offer built on bad information is worth nothing to either of us. Tell us it floods and we will price it. Tell us it does not and it does, and we are back at the table, which is exactly the thing you were trying to avoid.
If you need the sale to happen on a fixed date, that is usually the real driver, and selling a Long Island home when you need to move fast walks through how that timeline actually works. If the house has been empty since the last storm, selling a vacant Long Island home covers the insurance and maintenance problems that come with that.
Four things to do before you list
Find out what zone you are actually in. People are wrong about this constantly, in both directions. Pull the flood map for your address rather than relying on what a neighbor told you.
Locate your elevation certificate. If you have one, it is worth real money to a buyer. If you do not, find out what it costs to get one before you decide you do not want it.
Pull your claim history. You are going to be asked whether you ever filed a flood claim. Know the answer before a buyer’s agent does.
Talk to your attorney about the disclosure form first. The flood questions are not optional anymore, and the time to understand your answers is before the house is on the market.
If you would rather not run that gauntlet
If your Long Island home is in a flood zone and you do not want to spend six months finding a buyer whose insurance quote works, we will give you a cash offer on it as it stands.
No repairs, no elevation work, no commissions, no lender, and you choose the closing date.
Call We Buy Homes In Long Island at (631) 201-1727 or request your offer. The offer is free and there is no obligation to take it.
This post is general information, not legal or insurance advice. Disclosure requirements, FEMA flood maps and insurance rules change. Confirm your own obligations with your attorney and your insurance professional before you sell.