For those of you who aren’t familiar with flood insurance, I envy you. Frankly, it’s not something that I like to think about. But I live in Sacramento, the metropolitan area pretty much universally considered to face the second-highest risk for a catastrophic flood. New Orleans was number one.

I’ve owned two homes in Sac, the first of which was in a designated high-risk flood plain. That means I was required to purchase flood insurance to finish escrow. Luckily, the National Flood Insurance Program was up and running at the time and so I didn’t have any trouble purchasing a policy and closing on the sale.

But for many homeowners over the past year, that hasn’t been the case. The NFIP has expired three times over that period, including at midnight on May 31. That means that homeowners trying to purchase new policies simply cannot do so. Current policy holders are still covered, but any one trying to buy a policy to complete a home sale is stuck waiting on the Congress to enact new legislation.

There’s hope that this will happen soon, but until then, homeowners looking to buy new NFIP policies are well, (yes, I’m going to write it) up a creek without a paddle.