Across the street from me, is a lot, someone bought it, took the old mobile off [LOL, not nearly as old as mine] and brought in big equipment, made the entire 2+ acres into a level sandbox, which blows in my windows.
And are now setting up for the foundation of a home.
There is a for sale sign on the south half of the lot, we have one acre minimum lot size for a residence, and if it is sold before we get a good rain, someone will think they bought a nice lot, but never look at the big wash across the street or a flood map...........and about 2/3 of the lot should not be built on.
LOL "cute!" Sure!
We owned property west of the White Tank Mountains on the western outskirts of Phoenix. Some of the lots were set in a flood zone and the houses had to be built above the estimated 100 year flood level. It's shocking that the house lot you're looking at was allowed to be done below the future flood level.
There was a community in Phoenix built very close to the old floodway for Cave Creek. The houses flooded out when a monsoon came every August, and "no one new why." Someone finally looked at the floodplain map and whoops, the creek wanted to flow through there. They had to dig a huge diversion canal to take the water away. It fed into another diversion canal that ultimately emptied into the Agua Fria River. Fascinating that water diversion would be a problem in the desert... but when the rain comes at over 1" per hour, and everything's built up from concrete and asphalt, the water has to go somewhere!
but when the rain comes at over 1” per hour, and everything’s built up from concrete and asphalt, the water has to go somewhere!<<<
It is recorded here 4 1/2 inches in 30 minutes, this happened several times to me when I lived on the mountain and it would wash my road out in 2 places, $400.00 to fix it and it might rain again the same day it was fixed.
Even here, a friend, years ago, worked at the Soil Conservation Federal Office, when the Federal photos came in, he came to check on us, as they showed us as a solid sheet of water.
We had been, I watched it happen, rain, look out the window, there are cute little washes, only inches or so wide, every few feet, look again, more of them, until it was a solid sheet, had it gotten any higher we would have been in trouble.
The east end of the mobile is at ground level, but the west end, some 55’ away, is 28 inches off the ground, a good slope for taking off water.
We have lost many cars in the flash floods and I took photos of a Greyhound bus washed off the highway..........it wasn’t so funny the next year, when we almost went off at the same spot, in a Toyota pickup, it was only Bills knowledge and strength, that kept us on the road, and it was at the deepest, maybe 6 inches, but the power of it.
Those flood maps, should be included in every escrow, but folks would not read it, as they don’t read contracts.