Every Vermont unit sale now carries a flood map
Every Vermont unit sale now carries a flood map
2026-09-19 · Vermont · Compliance
Since September 1, 2025, a Vermont condominium unit cannot change hands without the seller handing the buyer a flood insurance rate map — or a notice that none exists.
Act 52 of 2025 (H.106), “An act relating to selling real property within a FEMA mapped flood hazard area”, was signed June 11, 2025 and took effect September 1, 2025. Section 2 rewrites 27 V.S.A. § 380, the disclosure statute that attaches to every conveyance of real property in Vermont — which includes a condominium unit and a lot in a planned community.1
What changed
The old section asked the seller for yes-or-no statements about special and moderate flood hazard areas. Those are repealed. In their place:
New (a)(3) requires “a physical or electronic copy or a digital link of the official flood insurance rate map, as published by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or notice that a flood insurance rate map is unavailable effective for the community in which the real property is located.”
(a)(4) requires disclosure of whether the property “was subject to flooding or flood damage while the seller possessed the property, including flood damage from inundation or from flood-related erosion or landslide damage.”
(a)(5) requires disclosure of whether the seller “maintains or is required by federal or State law to maintain flood insurance on the real property.” The requirement clause is new.
The subsection that was quietly broken, and is now fixed
The old § 380(c) gave the cause of action to “[a] buyer of real estate who fails to receive the information” — a formulation that put the failure on the buyer. It now reads:
“If a seller of real estate fails to provide the information required to be disclosed … a buyer may bring an action to recover from the seller the amount of the buyer's damages and reasonable attorney's fees.”
Punitive damages remain available “when the seller knowingly failed to provide the required information.” The buyer's termination right in (b), the reliance safe harbour in (d) and the rule in (e) that noncompliance “shall not affect the marketability of title” are all retained.
Where this lands on the association
The disclosure duty is the seller's, not the association's. Subsection (a)(5) is what pulls the board in.
A unit owner asked whether flood insurance is “required by federal or State law” on the unit cannot answer from personal knowledge. In a condominium, a federal flood-insurance requirement typically attaches through the association's master policy and the community's participation in the National Flood Insurance Program, and it is the association that knows.
Vermont's resale mechanism is 27A V.S.A. § 4-109, and it gives the owner a right to ask. The association, “within 10 days after a request by a unit owner, shall furnish to the unit owner a certificate containing the information necessary to enable the unit owner to comply.” The certificate's enumerated contents include insurance coverage provided for the benefit of unit owners.
Two consequences follow. The purchase contract is voidable by the purchaser until the certificate has been provided and for five days thereafter, so a slow association delays closings. And the owner “is not liable to the purchaser for any erroneous information provided by the association and included in the certificate” — the risk of getting the answer wrong sits with the association, not the seller.
The two disclosure duties nobody talks about
Act 52 rewrote a section that Act 181 of 2024 had created the year before, and Act 181 added two others that reach association-world actors directly.
9 V.S.A. § 4466: “A landlord shall disclose in advance of entering a rental agreement with a tenant whether any portion of the premises offered for rent is located in a Federal Emergency Management Agency mapped special flood hazard area”, in a separate written document substantially in the Department of Housing and Community Development's model form, delivered at or before lease execution. That reaches every Vermont unit owner who rents a unit out.
10 V.S.A. § 6236(e)(8)(A): every mobile home lot lease must carry conspicuous notice, in a model form attached as an addendum, that the park is in a flood hazard area if any lot in it is wholly or partly so located.
The act these came from was passed over a veto
Act 181 of 2024 (H.687) was vetoed by Governor Phil Scott on June 13, 2024 and the veto was overridden on June 17, 2024 — the House 107–38, the Senate 21–8. The act took effect that day. It is the only law in this area enacted over a gubernatorial veto.2
What to watch next
Vermont's legislative response to the July 2023 and July 2024 floods ran almost entirely through disclosure and land use. No Vermont act enacted between 2024 and September 2026 addresses condominium master policies, property-insurance deductibles, unit-owner walls-in coverage, or insurer nonrenewal.
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