VOLUSIA COUNTY, Fla. – Over 7,000 homes and businesses flooded in Volusia County in Hurricane Ian, which made landfall in Florida one year ago.
Over a thousand of those homes were in New Smyrna Beach, and many homeowners are still dealing with the effects today.
Local realtors told News 6 that many decided to pack up to leave and are still trying to sell their homes ‘as is.’
“Life changes, and you have to change with it,” resident Barbara Munch said.
Looking back on selling their home of 27 years, Munch and her husband, Bill, said they still don’t regret leaving after Ian brought feet of water into their house.
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“Eighteen and a half inches all through the house. Two thousand square feet, plus the mother-in-law apartment,” Munch said.
After getting it cleaned up, they put it on the market. The couple said they did not want to put even more work into the home than they already had.
“We decided after all of the wall was taken halfway that we weren’t going to rebuild,” she said.
It’s a situation New Smyrna Beach Board of Realtors President Jenny Snyder said she has heard dozens of times over the last year. She called it a constantly fluctuating number still.
“I can’t even give you a rough number of how many properties came back on the market that were pulled off the market or put back on the market,” she said.
Many of those homes still have the drywall cut out and concrete exposed.
Snyder said realtors have had to get creative in marketing.
“Someone could go in there with the peace of mind and know it’s a blank slate. I can do dry walls, the floors, the cabinets, and it’s almost like going into a house that’s a new build, but it’s existing bones,” she said.
New Smyrna Beach collected the highest amount of rain in Central Florida during Ian with 21 inches in 24 hours. The city’s drains took on more than they were designed to take and overflowed.
“I wrapped my cat in a blanket, realized I couldn’t open any of my doors, so I went through the window in my kitchen,” Nick Perry said.
Perry, a realtor himself, decided to save his home after the flood while also helping clients.
“Just trying to be proactive and get back into your house is a challenging thing when everything is booked up, and then my friends who work in construction, I was giving them more work to go help other people, but I also have to fix my own home,” he said.
Perry replaced the flooring, walls, furniture, cabinets, and electrical, but the work came with unexpected, feisty challenges.
“While I had my house open and had the drywall cut out, land crabs started to invade my house and actually crawl up the studs into the walls,” he said.
Perry said roughly 75% of the fixes came out of pocket with no insurance help and little FEMA funding.
He started moving back in during March and is now finally happy to be back home.
“I decided to stay here because I love my home, and I’m fine with it,” Perry said.
Many of the homes that flooded during Ian in New Smyrna Beach and other parts of Volusia County were not technically in flood zones but still took on water due to the record flooding Ian brought.
While the hope is another storm doesn’t have that much rainfall again, Snyder said they now recommend flood insurance to all clients, regardless of whether the house is in a flood zone or not.
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