Norman, Ok Flood zone issue with FEMA

[Jobin Cherian]

Hey guys, 

I bought a property back towards the start of March. The property was wholesaled twice before we bought it. Unfortunately, it was never disclosed the property was in the flood plains. The flood elevation line is 1164 and our property is 1163.5 after doing a survey. FEMA requires above 2 feet when we are doing substantial rehab. the original owner put it down to the studs and probably found out he had to elevate the property by 2 feet and decided to wholesale it. So any work to the property would be considered substantial (50% of the worth of the property) We bought it at 135k. We tried to work with the city of Norman and they said we could do false floors or raise the structure or tear down(after being in at 135k, doesn't seem reasonable). Unfortunately, the property is on slab so raising it two feet does cost a substantial amount of money. The property has never flooded and the street has never flooded but the city obviously wants to make sure they are covered by FEMA for compliance. Since no one has reported a flood, we also can not qualify for grants provided by FEMA that we are aware of. If we try to do a wall barrier with a drainage system, we would have to also provide a full study for the city to make sure its not affecting any other structures(roughly about 15k additional barrier price). we know the property will require about 80k of rehab and will be worth about 300-320k. we are trying to figure out if anyone has gone through anything similar or any suggestions on how we need to go about this situation with the city or FEMA. any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.