Over 20% of U.S. Properties at Risk for Flood Not in Designated Flood Zones

An estimated 23 percent of residential and commercial properties in the U.S. are at High or Moderate risk of flooding, based on CoreLogic proprietary flood analysis, but are outside of designated Special Flood Hazard Areas (SFHA) as identified by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), according to new data analysis from CoreLogic.

Property owners living within SFHA zones must have flood insurance if there is a federally insured mortgage, while those living outside SFHA zones are not required to have flood insurance. Many property owners choose not to carry flood insurance if it is not required even though their property may still be at risk of flood.

Nationally, more than 29 million properties (29,437,151), or 23 percent, are outside a designated SFHA despite being at High or Moderate risk of flooding, according to CoreLogic analysis. At the state level:

• Florida has the highest number of properties in this category at 5,055,821, or 54 percent of total properties.
• Texas has 3,292,082 properties, or 31 percent, and California has 3,114,462 properties, or 29 percent.
• Looking at only the percentage of properties outside an SFHA, which are at High or Moderate risk, Arizona has the highest at 68 percent, followed by Florida at 54 percent and Louisiana at 49 percent.

Table 1 shows the number of properties, nationally and by state, at Extreme, Very High, High and Moderate CoreLogic risk levels, as well as the total number and percentage of properties in the High and Moderate risk levels that are not designated in an SFHA.

Table 1: Properties by Risk Level and SFHA Designation*

*Properties designated as Low or Very Low risk are included in the total property count, but are not listed separately in Table 1. Properties without an address were not included in the analysis.

Source: CoreLogic