What Flood Insurance Actually Pays: 1.4 Million NFIP Home Claims

When a flood claim goes in, what actually comes back? FEMA publishes every National Flood Insurance Program claim, so we read all of them (the public, redacted file) for homes since 2000: 1,418,040 claims on houses and home units that carried building coverage. Here is what they show.

• About 4 in 5 claims got a building payment. 18.6% (263,623 claims) closed with nothing paid on the building.
• The typical paid claim was $23,720 for the building (the median; dollars as paid, not adjusted for inflation). When a claim did pay, the payment came to a median of 94% of the building damage FEMA recorded (payments are net of the deductible).
• $62.8 billion has been paid on these home claims, building and belongings together.
• Where you are matters a lot. In some river counties where the flood was unmistakable, about 19 claims in 20 paid. In several South Florida counties hit by hurricanes and downpours, 35–60% closed with no building payment, most often coded “not actual flood.”

The state and county numbers are in the tables below, and you can download the full county file.

Claims Come in Storm Years

Most flood claims arrive in a handful of bad years. Hurricane Katrina’s year alone produced more home claims than the six quietest years of the 2010s combined.

Payments grew over the period too: the median paid building claim was $9,639 in 2004 and $66,796 in 2024. Part of that is construction costs and inflation, part is that the big recent storms put deep water into homes. 2025 and 2026 are still filling in, because claims take months to close.

Low-Risk Zones Get Turned Down More Often

FEMA records the flood zone each policy was rated in. Claims from the moderate- and low-risk zones (X, B and C) are more likely to close without a building payment than claims from the high-risk A zones, and when they do pay, they pay less:

A large part of the reason is the policy’s definition of a flood. Under the Standard Flood Insurance Policy, a flood is a “general and temporary condition” of water covering two or more acres of normally dry land, or two or more properties (one of them yours), from overflowing water, unusual runoff, or mudflow. Water pooling in one yard during a downpour, wind-driven rain through a damaged roof, or a backed-up drain isn’t a flood under that definition (rain runoff that covers two or more properties is). In zone X, “not actual flood” is the most common reason a claim closes without payment.

That’s not an argument against flood insurance in zone X: 298,490 zone X home claims since 2000 were paid, about $15.5 billion in all. (See flood insurance in zone X.) It’s a reason to know what the policy counts as a flood.

Why Claims Close Without a Payment

FEMA’s file records a reason for most unpaid claims. Among the 186,066 unpaid home claims with a specific reason:

• Not actual flood: 37%. The water or damage didn’t meet the policy’s definition of a flood (above).
• Under the deductible: 29%. The covered damage was smaller than the deductible, so nothing was owed.
• No demonstrable damage: 22%. The adjuster found no demonstrable flood damage.
• Claim not pursued: 5% and wind damage: 4%. Wind is covered by homeowners or windstorm insurance, not flood insurance.

Another 41,935 are coded “other,” and 35,622 have no reason recorded, many of them 2005 Louisiana claims. The file says how a claim ended, not whether the decision was right. For what the policy covers and leaves out, see what flood insurance covers.

By State

Home claims since 2000, the share that closed with no building payment (“unpaid”), and the median building payment on claims that paid, in thousands (total dollars paid are in the download). States and territories with at least 100 claims; click a state for its flood zones and history.

The Counties Where Claims Most Often Don’t Pay

Among the 183 counties with at least 1,000 home claims since 2000, these had the highest share close with no building payment:

Many of these are storm years where wind and rain did much of the damage and the water was coded “not actual flood”; the file can’t say how much was wind. In Broward County, Florida, 81% of the 4,170 home claims from 2005, the year Katrina (in August) and Wilma (in October) crossed South Florida, closed without a building payment; of the 3,098 claims from 2023, when a record downpour flooded Fort Lauderdale, 10% did. In Aransas County, Texas, where Hurricane Harvey came ashore in 2017, 56% of that year’s 2,003 home claims closed without one. The list isn’t only hurricanes, though: Los Angeles County’s claims are spread across many years, Brunswick County, North Carolina’s most often fall under the deductible, and the two Louisiana parishes are mostly 2005 claims with no reason recorded.

And the lowest, where the water was unmistakably a flood:

St. Bernard Parish, Louisiana, flooded almost entirely after Katrina’s storm surge overtopped and breached its levees; its 17,297 home claims since 2000 had a median building payment of $94,600, and 93% paid. Every county with claims is in the download.

If You File a Claim

• Photograph everything before you clean up, including the water line on the walls, and keep samples of things like carpet if you can. The policy asks you to separate damaged from undamaged property and keep it available for the adjuster to examine.
• Send a proof of loss within 60 days of the flood. It’s your signed, sworn statement of what you’re claiming, and the policy requires it even if the adjuster doesn’t hand you the form. FEMA sometimes extends this deadline after a major storm, but don’t count on it.
• If the claim is denied in whole or in part, you can appeal to FEMA in writing within 60 days of the insurer’s written denial (44 CFR 62.20), with a copy of the denial and your supporting documents. Filing an appeal doesn’t extend the policy’s other deadlines, including the one-year limit (from the written denial) for filing a lawsuit, and once you sue, you can no longer appeal.
• Pick the deductible with this data in mind. “Under the deductible” is the second most common reason claims pay nothing. A higher deductible lowers the premium but means small floods come out of your pocket; see flood insurance cost.

Download the Data

Free to use with credit to FloodZoneMap.org. Reporters: each row is one county or state, home claims since 2000.

• NFIP home claims by county, 2000–2026 (CSV), 1,607 counties with 25 or more claims
• NFIP home claims by state, 2000–2026 (CSV)

How we counted: OpenFEMA FIMA NFIP Redacted Claims (v3), year of loss 2000 through October 2026, residential occupancy codes (single-family, 2–4 family, and the post-2021 equivalents), claims with building coverage above zero. Claims coded “error” or “erroneous assignment” (98, 99) are excluded. “No building payment” means the amount paid on the building is zero or missing; recent claims that are still open count as unpaid, so 2025 and 2026 figures will change. Median payment is over claims with a building payment above zero. Totals add building and contents payments, in dollars as paid. Flood zone is the zone the policy was rated in, grouped as A (A, AE, AO, AH, A1–A30, A99), V (V, VE, V1–V30) and X (X, B, C). Counties come from the county code on each claim.

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