Episode 18 | Gulf Shores Surprise: The Flood Risk You Won’t See in the Listing
Listen or watch on YouTube
In This Episode
Hosts: Bob Frady & John Siegman
Property: 308 W 12th Ave, Gulf Shores, AL 36542
Episode Summary
Welcome to another episode of PropertyLens! 🎙️ This time, Bob Frady and John Siegman break down a real listing in Gulf Shores, Alabama — a powerful walkthrough of how PropertyLens uncovers the hidden risks most listings leave out. From flood zones to termites to unlisted water damage, this episode shows how buyers can save time, money, and frustration by showing up in the know.
Key Takeaways
✅ The shocking flood zone information almost never mentioned in the listing
✅ How unclosed permits and water damage reveal deeper property issues
✅ Why PropertyLens makes you a smarter buyer before stepping foot inside
Resources
🔹 Realtor.com
🔹 Try it: Propertylens.com
🔹 Questions Contact us: support@propertylens.com
Transcript
[00:00:00]Bob Frady: Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, ships at sea. It is time for another episode of Property of the Week for PropertyLens. In case you don't know, I'm Bob Brady, co-founder and CEO of PropertyLens with me as always.
[00:00:24]John Siegman: John Siegman, co-founder and president of PropertyLens.
[00:00:28]Bob Frady: Hey, listen, if you're watching this on YouTube, click the subscribe button.
[00:00:31] It helps us feel better about ourselves. So John, we've been having a discussion about whether a PropertyLens is a up market or a mid-market or a down market product in terms of the price of the house, and everybody goes, well, yeah, the rich houses, you want that stuff, but maybe there's some differences in there.
[00:00:50] What do you think, you know, where do you think it applies?
[00:00:54]John Siegman: Well, it applies to all, but if you look at the lower priced part of the segment, right, those are typically starter homes. Those are typically people who are truly stretching to get into the home. Those are people who can't afford to make a mistake on the high end.
[00:01:15] Those are people with deep pockets who can afford lawyers, and that's the worst thing you want to have happen in a sale. Is the after close lawsuit. So, and then the mid-market, you're halfway to getting a lawyer. You're halfway to still stretching to get in the house. So across the spectrum, I think it's applicable and it's really a matter of your situation and where you play.
[00:01:43]Bob Frady: Okay, so here's what we like to do. We like to go to a random part of the country or a semi-random part of the country. Pick a random house and see what the PropertyLens report has to say about it.
[00:01:56]John Siegman: Where are we going this week?
[00:01:58]Bob Frady: We're going to a place I've actually been to before. We are going to lovely Gulf Shores, Alabama, a single family residential house, three bedrooms, two baths, 2000 square feet.
[00:02:09] Ran this report today, so we go in and take a look at the report.
[00:02:14]John Siegman: Well, the first thing this report tells you is all the questions that you, as a buyer. Should be asking the seller in this case, this property is located in a FEMA 100 year flood zone one. It means you're gonna have to have flood insurance if you have a mortgage.
[00:02:31] Two, has this property ever flooded? Not all properties in a flood zone will flood, but it's also good to know, you know, you can see from the property, if we look at the picture that it was raised up, there were steps going up to the front. so there's probably an empty crawl space underneath. It's probably built that way for a reason.
[00:02:52]Bob Frady: So guess where I saw this on the listing?
[00:02:55]John Siegman: I don't know. Where did you see this from?
[00:02:56]Bob Frady: No, where? I didn't see it on the listing at all. That was a trick question.
[00:02:59]John Siegman: No, they didn't tell you it was in a flood zone.
[00:03:01]Bob Frady: A PropertyLens report is like a cheat code for a house. It's like you can decide, okay, I wanna go see this house. It's in a flood zone. All right, I'll negotiate appropriately. Or you can go, Nope, don't even wanna see it. 'cause it wasn't disclosed in the listing at all that this was in a hundred year flood zone. So bingo, we've already made it. And, and if your time is worth like a hundred bucks an hour then, and to drive back and forth to that house, it's a lot of money to spend your time.
[00:03:26] So boom, you've already paid for the report,
[00:03:29]John Siegman: Already made, you made your money back on the report.
[00:03:32]Bob Frady: Already positive ROI. Okay, so it's in a flood zone. What else do we see?
[00:03:37]John Siegman: Let's see. We got one construction permit in the last five years. Zero has been closed, so this “make permit” might be open, and if it's open, those are always bad things to deal with, especially if you're not the person who pulled it.
[00:03:53] Two repairs issued in the last 15 years. Siding and water damage. I wonder what happened there that would cause sightings and water damage, being in a hundred year flood zone. No idea. Let's find out.
[00:04:09]Bob Frady: Now listen, you may still wanna buy this house. You may say, I'll ride out the risk, you know, I'll ride it out.
[00:04:15] And I will take that as a piece of information that I know at some point in the future I'm gonna have to. Do some work on this house. Next we get termite infestation. Termites, you know, they like this area. So guess where that's disclosed on the listing?
[00:04:36]John Siegman: Nowhere, right? Oh, no.
[00:04:39]Bob Frady: Over two. So now this might be as simple as saying I need a termite inspection as part of the inspection, but guess where the termite inspection comes in?
[00:04:48] It doesn't. It's not part of the standard inspection on your inspector. You might say, Hey, look out for termites and see if you see anything. But it's not part of the normal inspection, so unless the inspector knows to look for it. So you're already, you're in the chips right now. How about the roof, John?
[00:05:05]John Siegman: Well, the roof's still, yeah, it's eight years old. 18 years left, 26 year lifespan for shingles in Alabama. you know, it's a big rook. It looked like it was a single story for the most part. How? So you got a lot of things to take care of there, but, you know, at eight years, sort of borderline for a lot of insurance companies at that point, and you'd wanna make sure that, you know, the roof has been taken care of.
[00:05:32] all the shingles are up there and see if they put in reinforced shingles when they put it on.
[00:05:38]Bob Frady: Very nice. This location does have a high instance of crime. so you wanna make sure that you've got a security system on the house. Could be as simple as a series of ring cameras or ring light cameras if you favor other cameras.
[00:05:52] But make sure you get some sort of security on this house, especially if you're gonna make it a vacation house, if you're gonna be there part-time, 'cause you want to be there. When it's nice and you're not there part-time, get a security system for the house. We see that there was a wind event here in September of 2020, so you wanna check if the owner was there.
[00:06:09] Did anything happen to the property?
[00:06:11]John Siegman: Well, we got lightning. Not too surprising. They do get convective storms. You'd wanna check for a whole house, surge depression system, and if it's a really high area and you're at the top of whatever hill might be there. You might want to also have a rod or some other way of getting the lightning away from your apps.
[00:06:31] Guess what else they have in Alabama? John, it's next on our list. mold. 'cause you got heat, you got moisture, and you got no temperatures that are ever gonna get cold enough to kill it off.
[00:06:45]Bob Frady: Yep. Mold is tricky 'cause a lot of times it hides, sometimes you can smell it, it just smells musky. Sometimes you can see that the wall might be slightly warped.
[00:06:55] Or there might be areas of drips, drip marks inside of the house or staining in the house where the mold is growing behind it. But it's a tough one, to pull out. You're gonna need a car here. it's below average walkability, unless you're like a super walker. It has a fireplace and there's no solar panels on here.
[00:07:14] So you can print these questions out and take 'em with you to the open house to say, Hey, what about this? And what about that? You come in as the advantaged buyer. You come in, in the know. You already know it. Walking into the house. Now listen, they may have remediated this place out the wazoo, who knows?
[00:07:30] But these are the questions to ask. So next we have our InspectorLens, which are sort of the same questions, just rearranged from an inspection standpoint. It's in a hundred year flood zone. Check and see if there's sub pumps. Are they working? If there are, are there french drains that you have? Has there been anything done to lower the risk of flood?
[00:07:49] At the property, check for sides of sewage backup, which is nastiness on the floor and the like, if there is a crawl space, and we'll find that out later. you probably wanna get into that crawl space to check it out, to see exactly what's been going on in the lower levels. The same thing with termites.
[00:08:04] Look for all the good stuff. The roof's in good condition. You could, you could get up there on the roof if you want to, but check her around the edges at least to make sure it's in good shape. There's some crime in this area. Check for creosote buildup. If there's a fireplace, consider a mold test and look for mold damage.
[00:08:21] So a lot of people will say, I don't need your report. I got an inspector. Well, who would you rather have? The inspector that knows these things and knows to check them, or the inspector who does it. I know I want the one who knows these things while he's doing or she's doing. Her inspection. It's like, because if you know about something, chances are you're more likely to see whether or not it's actually there.
[00:08:49] And then again, you can print 'em out, give 'em the inspector. Okay, so what else we got in terms of insurance? John
[00:08:54]John Siegman: Insurance, your homeowners are not gonna cover you for blood. That is a totally separate policy. You can get a NFIP policy from FEMA, or you can look into private flood insurance, but you are going to.
[00:09:08] Can't say you're going to need it, but you're gonna need it. Prime is going to cost you a little bit more. So again, while Bob likes Ring, I like Nest. Get a security system.
[00:09:19]Bob Frady: Budget for it.
[00:09:20]John Siegman: Fireplaces are associated with increased fire risk. Why? Because they're typically fires inside fireplaces. If this is a wood, wood-burning fireplace, you've got Creo soap buildup, you've got other things that you need to take into account.
[00:09:33] Take those things into account. And then the property here has an estimated replacement cost of $416,000. I don't recall the actual list price, but I thought it was sort of around that. $474,000 something like that.
[00:09:48]Bob Frady: $475,000
[00:09:49]John Siegman: $475,000. So in this case, if you insure for the purchase price, you've actually got yourself covered.
[00:09:57] About 70% of properties in the US have a replacement cost that is higher. Then the market value of the property.
[00:10:05]Bob Frady: Okay, so now we go into the Property section. There's not a basement in this house, so there's probably a crawl space in the house and you wanna take a look at that crawl space or have the inspector take a look at the crawl space.
[00:10:17] People don't love going into the crawl spaces. There's nasty stuff in there. So you gotta make sure that your inspector's like, Hey, you know, am I, are you gonna charge me extra? But go check out the crawlspace. Let's see. It's one story. It's got microwaves, refrigerator, electric range. It's all electric.
[00:10:38] It does have access to gas. It's about a mile from the shore, which is not as bad as being on the shore. and it looks like it's got public water and sewer. It's built with stucco. It's a ranch style, house average standard construction, with a 1,400 square foot roof, in Gulf Shores, Alabama Most recent listing detail.
[00:11:02] $475,000 is the listing price. Well, it happens to be the market value. The midpoint of the market value is the listing price and here's the description of the property. And listen, it sounds like a great place. You know, it sounds like a terrific place. Natural Gas is available, although it's electric for this house.
[00:11:19] We look at a lot of this information, you know. To help determine what the age of the systems are, and it doesn't really tell you a whole lot. The exterior had a sighting installed in 2020, and it tells you about majestic oak trees and screen and back porch. Tells you all sorts of stuff, but doesn't tell you when stuff was done.
[00:11:40] That's what we're trying to tell you. It looks like this is the first time it's been sold since it's been built. and let's see. Taxes are relatively low for this property. Pretty, pretty low property taxes, which is great. Here's pictures of the house. looks lovely, like a nice place. and then we'll get down to damaging events.
[00:12:08] So in 2020 we will have some wind. In 2021, we had some hail. This data really started getting good about five to eight years ago, so that's kind of what we show. Sometimes we'll have a little bit more, but for the most part, this is what it looks like in the last five years, and if there was an event yesterday, we would have it here today.
[00:12:30] We could see the roof, how it's changed over time. If you want to have some fun, you can go to different times. You can say, show me what the roof looked like in 2015. There it is..
[00:12:44]John Siegman: That roof has been replaced.
[00:12:46]Bob Frady: Yeah. Have lots of fun. So here is our roof condition score. part of our RoofLens systems.
[00:12:57] So what are we showing for the roof there, John?
[00:12:59]John Siegman: Well, it looks like it's about 8 years old. 18 years left. It's shingled material somewhere between. You know, $12,000, about $12,000, $13,000 to replace should it need to be replaced. This roof looks really good, right now, but it did have, you know, as we noted a sizable event in the area, you'd wanna make sure that something, you know, did that hail hit here and if it did, what took place on the road.
[00:13:31] but it seems to be in great shape. It's got medium risk exposure. So, you know, it's not bad, it's not great, it just is.
[00:13:39]Bob Frady: Yep. It's gable roof, which is great in hurricane prone areas rather than a hip roof, structure and foundation. It's made of stucco, the soil composition. It's very young soils.
[00:13:55] Drains well. So you should have good drainage at this property. It's not so good for a septic tank. and you could have a basement here. They just don't.
[00:14:06]John Siegman: Well, being in a flood zone, probably not the world's best idea to have a basement.
[00:14:10]Bob Frady: Yeah, probably you don't, you don't need a temporary pool in your basement.
[00:14:14] Okay. What do we get for potential, threats to start structural integrity there, John.
[00:14:20]John Siegman: Really not a whole lot other than termites. yep. It's got nice soft water, so, you know, a lot less likelihood to have leaks caused by hard water. no mine, subsidence soil drainage is great. you're not gonna have frost heat down in Alabama, at least not this part of Alabama.
[00:14:41] So other termites, from a structure standpoint, really nothing to worry about, you know, other than hurricanes, tornadoes, stuff like that.
[00:14:52]Bob Frady: Okay. I. We get to Property Updates & Repairs, which are, as told to us by permit history. So here's the last, the roof was eight years ago. Building improvement was five years ago.
[00:15:05] First thing we tell you is, are the permits required? and they are in Gulf Shores. New home construction additions, alterations, its or installation of accessory structures, like a garage or a shed. it is in a coastal and hurricane prone area, so there are some pretty strict wind and local flood regulations.
[00:15:27] So you wanna check with the local permit area just to make sure that if you're gonna do any work in this house, after you buy it, what exactly needs to be done. And we give you a link to gulfshore permits. So here's what we see. Look, the siding was replaced in 2020, just like they said in the listing. The roof was replaced in 2017, which they didn't mention in the listing, and there was water damage in 2011, which was not mentioned in the listing.
[00:15:57] Oh, flooding potential. You're in a flood zone. A hundred year flood zone. And by rule, if you're in a 500-year. If you're in a hundred year flood zone, you can't be in a 500-year flood zone. 'cause the hundred year is inside of the 500-year. flood insurance is required if you have a mortgage and we recommend it.
[00:16:17] So if you're gonna finance this, you need to have flood insurance. Now, unfortunately, most people get flood insurance and then drop the premium after the first year because people aren't so good at checking on following up. Whether or not you still have flood insurance, but it is required and you should have it in this location.
[00:16:35] Because here's the thing, you get it from both directions. You get it from the coast, although it's kind of moderate from the coast, but you also get it from water that's surrounding you from rivers. At higher risk of rivers,
[00:16:47]John Siegman: it's usually caused by lots of water falling from the sky. And since you're in a hurricane prone area, those are the storms that drive that issue.
[00:16:57]Bob Frady: Water likes to fall from the sky. In Gulf Shores and, and the map lacks nuance as we would say.
[00:17:05]John Siegman: Oh, I don't know. There's a couple of 500-year zones in that map. Yeah. This is just one big red swath.
[00:17:13]Bob Frady: Yeah. Yeah. You're in the zone. You're in the zone. so there are no LOMAs and there are no LOMAs. So this person has not said, okay, I should be in the flood zone.
[00:17:28] We don't have a record of that at all from FEMA. Okay. Naturally occurring risks. Some people would call these perils. What do we get here, John?
[00:17:38]John Siegman: All right. For the naturally occurring risk, peril slash hazard slash bad things that can happen to your house. We have hurricanes. You know, this is an area that is prone to hurricane, national percentile.
[00:17:54] 96.69% of it, you'd have to work really hard to get higher than that. The historic loss ratio is low, which is always good. so, you know, you can look at that as, hey, this place might be subjected but doesn't happen here, or they've just been lucky so far. totally Your call. Lightning, we talked about lightning.
[00:18:19] there's a lot of lightning strikes. They get convective storms. They get things that drive lightning. so you'd wanna definitely, you know, understand that, being a d you probably just need to get a whole house suppression system versus an app that would require a rod.
[00:18:38]Bob Frady: I would also make sure you had a porch so you could watch the Lightning Star, because that's kind of cool.
[00:18:42]John Siegman: Well, that's sort of cool. Yeah. Everything else is fairly calm. Really, I mean, you know, you're not gonna be pretty nice, you're not gonna have a volcano, the wrong side of the country, wrong side per tsunami. It's flat there. So no landslides, sinkholes. 32 states can get 'em. Alabama is one of those states, but not where this house happens to be situated.
[00:19:09] you're not gonna get an ice storm. Every now and then you will get hail, but it's not a regular. Visitor type of thing. It's sort of, you know, a rare event. Yep. So all in all, not bad.
[00:19:24]Bob Frady: Not bad at all. So crime.
[00:19:29]John Siegman: Well, you know, the joint crime is, it's very, it's a rapidly changing variable.
[00:19:36] Most of the things that we deal with are time series. You know, things change slowly and over time. Crime is an annual event and can be changed simply by putting a police car out in front of your house. but here you see aggravated assault. If this is near a beach, you get a lot of that type of traffic and burglary.
[00:20:02] same type of thing. Everything else, not too bad. The US is a relatively safe country. Sees are okay. really safe for rape and robbery. Cool.
[00:20:14]Bob Frady: On the good news side, no sex offenders. No sex. That's always good. It's, and again, this is something that people get very concerned about after the fact. It's like, you should, you can know this.
[00:20:25] Walking in, it's like, yeah, there's some risk, but there's some good things too. In the neighborhood, you know, there's not a lot of public transit and you're gonna, and it's not really great for walking. Otherwise it's, it's kind of quiet. There's an airport nearby. You know, you'll get some air airport noise, but not much.
[00:20:44] No real noise, not a lot of road noise, which is great. It's a nice quiet place. And the community's pretty well prepared for natural disasters. A lot of communities panic, oh, they don't have the infrastructure. But Gulf Shores, because they know they're hurricane prone, is pretty good at natural disaster resilience.
[00:21:03] It's been some fun stuff, like points of interest, you know, where the nearest churches are, where the schools are. All sorts of fun stuff like that. Toxic exposure, which is not so lovely. What are some of the risks? We've got a risk of mold. There's some PFAS in the drinking water around there.
[00:21:23] but it's relatively moderate and you've got low incidence of radon in this area. The nearest contaminated sites, there's a couple of underground storage tanks pretty close by, at the quick stop, usually at the gas station, 'cause gas tanks are underground and if they leak, it can leach out to a thousand feet or so, which may impact your property, but relatively rare.
[00:21:47] but there is a Superfund site close by, which is the Fort Morgan drum company, which is becoming a required disclosure in some states, but it is a mile away, so it's pretty far. And there was a clandestine drug lab about 1.3 miles away, and another one close by, 1.37 miles away. And then all the stuff you wanna know, here's some stuff that you might not know is your fire and protection and response is, you know, pretty good.
[00:22:19] It's good fire stations around there. There's some ants around there. Law enforcement. Re response, pretty good. Ven. Cool. Pretty good based upon the density of those types of folks in the area. Health and safety services, pretty close by, police station's, less than a mile away. Fire station's less than a mile away, which is always good if you are in need of those services.
[00:22:45] We estimate the utility cost to be about $170 a month on average. Oh, excuse me. Here's the electricity cost over here. If you wanna get sold, you could probably knock most of that out. That depends upon your flavor. Baldwin County Electric is your utility. If you click here, you can be linked to that utility to set up service and it averages $169 a month, in electric bill based upon a house of that size. Now, your consumption may differ. If you like to run the air conditioning at 65 all day long, you're probably gonna pay more than somebody who is more conservative with their AC.
[00:23:32] And if you wanna get a solar system, you can click here and. It'll show you solar. That's the carbon footprint for your utility. They use mostly natural gas and a bunch of coal to power. And then here's the insurability. Now this is interesting because this is hurricane prone and because it's close, it's within a mile of the shore, there's a big variation on what insurance is gonna cost.
[00:24:00] So the first thing I would do. Before making a final offer I would call an insurance agent and see just exactly how much this insurance is gonna cost me. Because $3,300 a year is $280 a month. $11,000 is a little bit closer to $1000 a month, so. It is a big swing and you wanna make sure you get a quote before you make a final offer because a mortgage on this place is like $2,800 bucks a month.
[00:24:28] You wanna add another thousand for this, you add another few hundred for flood insurance and pretty soon it gets pretty pricey.
[00:24:38] Here's some of the risk factors that they take into account. Crime and hurricane are the two big ones, and again, showing the type of house that it is. You can go get a quote if you want to inside of the application. And then finally, here's the timeline. So their listing was April 1st. This house was listed and here's all the other data that we have.
[00:25:01] So there you go. That is the PropertyLens report for 308 West 12th Avenue . If you were going to buy 308 West 12th Avenue in Gulf Shores, Alabama. What are the three things that you would want to consider before making an offer here?
[00:25:30]John Siegman: Well, the first thing that I would want to consider is, do I really want to have a property that's in a flood zone?
[00:25:38] Maybe yes, maybe no. Maybe the neighbors are great. Maybe you know, there's a few that they didn't show. Who knows? but that would be the first thing I would want a rundown on floods, because not every 100 year flood zone is alike. Some of them fled quite often. Some of them truly fled once every hundred years.
[00:26:02] So, that would be the first. The first consideration is to talk to me about flood. The second consideration would be, tell me about crime. You know, is this for the general area? Is this my neighborhood in particular? What, what do I really need to know? And if I have an alarm system and I'm treating this as a vacation home, do the police really show up?
[00:26:36] Or is it just a loud noise maker that irritates my neighbors? Right? So that would be the second thing I would consider. And then the third thing I would consider based on the report is it's definitely subject to lightning. A nearby lightning strike could end up blowing out all of the appliances. I don't really like to buy new appliances.
[00:27:00] So, I would definitely wanna make sure that there was some type of suppression going on.
[00:27:08]Bob Frady: So if I were buying or considering 308 West 12th Avenue in Gulf Shores, Alabama, here are the top three things I would look for. Number one, how much is insurance going to cost? Because it's in a flood zone, it's near the ocean, and it's got hurricanes.
[00:27:29] So how much does that cost? Because that could have a massive impact on my affordability for this location. The second is flood. It's in a flood zone. It looks like it's had water damage before that may have been from a hurricane. It may have been from a flood, but it's had water damage before. What's been done to prevent future flooding?
[00:27:52] Are there French drains? Are there some sort of system to help? Mitigate the risk of flooding. And then the third is mold. It's like it's a moist climate. You know that a water cut has come to the house before it rains. There are a lot. You have hurricanes a lot. Get a mold test for this location because, and, and make sure that you ask the cellar if they have had mold issues in the house before.
[00:28:20] They have to answer you as correctly as possible. And they might say, I don't know, which is definite if, if the realtor says, I don't know, to mold questions, get a mold inspection before, you decide to finally purchase the house, because that could really impact your ability to enjoy that house if it's full of mold and you have a mold sensitivity.
[00:28:41] So those are the three things that I would look for. insurance, flood, mold are the three things I would look for at this location, but otherwise it looks nice. Gulf Shore's a great town in a lot of ways. It's got, you can buy Sapsucker gin in Gulf Shores, Alabama. And I know that because I've done it and I love sapsucker gin 'cause it's awesome and they're not even sponsoring this podcast.
[00:29:06] So that's what, that's what we got. And all of this can be yours by going to propertylens.com, buying a report. And remember, if you don't like what you see, you don't think it's valuable, just let us know.
[00:29:18]HP: Giving your money back.
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