Property owners in southwest Dearborn receiving letters from their mortgage companies that they now are required to purchase flood insurance should know that the issue may be resolved within four weeks, according to Dearborn city officials.

We received e-mails from several readers who expressed surprise at having to purchase such insurance. One reader on Katherine Street said he was informed by GMAC Mortgage that he now resided in a Special Flood Hazard Area when he began the process of refinancing his mortgage.

Dearborn city officials say these letters from the mortgage companies are prompted by the fact that Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) flood control maps for the Dearborn area, adopted in 1996, expired on Feb. 2, 2012. New maps were adopted on Feb. 2, 2012.

However, there is a process that allows property owners to be exempt from purchasing flood insurance even if their property appears within a FEMA floodplain. That process is expected to be resolved within four weeks.

In the past, many homes now receiving letters from their mortgage company were exempted through Letters of Map Amendments (LOMA), issued by FEMA. Those LOMAs expired on Feb. 2, 2012 when the previous flood control map expired.

From 2000 to 2011, FEMA issued 1,400 LOMAs to property owners in Dearborn whose homes fell within the old flood control map.

In the next four weeks, the City expects that FEMA will revalidate and reissue LOMAs exempting property from the need to buy flood insurance.

Dearborn’s Engineering Division will transmit this information to the affected property owners as soon as the City receives the notice from FEMA.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 16th, 2012 at 11:25 pm and is filed under Around Town, City Hall. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.