St. Petersburg real estate attorney Matt Weidner has already met with several property owners preparing to file suit, alleging their Realtors should have warned them their flood bills would soar.
“It’s a known defect,” Weidner said. “As professionals, they had an obligation to know when it was passed more than a year ago.”
Weidner grants that it would have taken Realtors a few months after the passage of the Biggert-Waters Flood Insurance Reform Act in July 2012 to realize its flood rate implications — maybe as much as six months. But after that, failure to tell prospective buyers becomes deceptive, he said.
“There are going to be many, many Realtors who are going to pay the price,” he said. “Their insurance carriers are going to be cutting checks to people who bought these homes.”
