FEMA Flood Zone Determination

Stay in Compliance with Special Flood Hazard Area Notifications

A FEMA flood zone determination can and does change over time. Changes occur for many reasons, including new development, levee reclassification, and environmental changes.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is continually updating its flood hazard maps across the country to account for these changes. These maps, known as Digital Flood Insurance Rate Maps, show flood risk at a property-by-property level.

Mortgage professionals are required to promptly notify property owners when FEMA issues a change in flood zone determination, either into or out of a Special Flood Hazard Area. Federal regulators have recently become more stringent in enforcing this notification rule.

Xactus can provide you with timely flood zone determination & other reports based on the most comprehensive & up-to-date FEMA data which include:

• Basic and life-of-loan service
• Loan portfolio review for compliance
• Real-time flood mapping
• High auto-determination rate
• HMDA services
• Nationwide coverage
• Premier selection of flood providers
• Census tract and HMDA data included with life-of-loan flood certificates

Lenders can be fined for every occurrence in which a borrower has not received notification of a change in flood zone determination. Xactus delivers peace of mind by meeting or exceeding all regulatory timelines for sending compliance notices.

Two types of flood zone determination reports offered:

Basic

A guaranteed flood zone determination (FZD) that provides all the required FEMA flood map and community participation status information.

• Available within seconds of your request
• Updated and maintained with the latest FEMA flood-map determinations
• Census tract & HMDA services included

Available CertMap (provided by ServiceLink) offers high resolution, full-color satellite, and aerial images, along with digital road-layers.

Life of Loan

A guaranteed FZD provides all the required FEMA flood map and community participation status information. The FZD is monitored for FEMA flood map revisions and community participation status changes for the term of the loan to maintain compliance with federal regulations and secondary market guidelines. Additionally, our life of loan FZDs are transferable between servicers. A consumer’s notification letter is included with a FZD for properties located in a SFHA (Special Flood Hazard Area).

Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) information can be included in Life of Loan reports. We provide the four required elements for free: Census Tract, Metropolitan Statistical Area, County Code, and State Code. HMDA information can be ordered with a FZD or independently in batch format.