There is an area about an hour south of where my DH and I live that is a great rental market (good renter pool, lower RE prices than our area) that I would like to further explore.
However, some areas of the town are prone to flooding and my DH used to work assigning temporary staff placements in that area around the time it was impacted by a hurricane and many people he worked with were impacted. Every time I bring up investigation of this city as a potential next rental for us, he basically is like "BUT IT FLOODS ALL THE TIME" and that is all he wants to talk about. I have tried to tell him that 1) just because there was flooding doesn't mean there will be a hurricane yearly 2) we can buy insurance 3) a flood make make roads impassable but not necessarily damage your house, but to no avail.
Now, I also don't want to buy in a flood plain but am of the opinion it can flood anywhere, you can only mitigate the risk (ie 100-year flood plain vs 5-year) and buy insurance (which costs a fortune in high-risk areas). I have tried to look at government flood plain maps for the area but found them almost incomprehensible.
Can anyone suggest to me how I can get data on what areas are likely to flood in the town and then use this to convince him which areas are lower risk for flooding? Last night was probably the 10th time in the past year we've had this same conversation.