How to Check for Flood Risk During Home Buying

You’ve found the perfect home — sunny kitchen, the right number of bathrooms, and a big, beautiful yard. And then someone mentions a case of flooding in the area — far from any major body of water. You start wondering, Could my dream home be at risk for flood damage?

The fact is home buyers need to pay attention to their flood risk and the need for flood control. All home buyers. As the Federal Emergency Management Agency fact sheet says, “Anywhere it can rain, it can flood.”

Unexpected flooding caused major problems for Mabél Guzmán, a broker at Coldwell Banker Realty and the 2020 vice president of association affairs at the National Association of REALTORS^®. “I moved into a townhouse that was not even near a flood zone and didnt require flood insurance,” she says. “I lived there for over five years and had no flooding issues until a storm caused so much flooding that we had to replace the furnace. Moreover, FEMA had to help, and each homeowner impacted received 2,000.”

Property owners outside of high-risk flood areas file more than 20% of all claims with the National Flood Insurance Program (one in five!). Plus, they receive one-third of all federal disaster assistance for flooding.

But your real estate agent and other resources can help you contact flood risk experts. They can assess the flood risk on a particular property and sharpen your view of how much risk you can tolerate. 

How to Assess a Homes Flood Zone and Flood Risk

If you start your home search on realtor.com, you’ll find flood risk information baked into some of the listings. Specifically, you might see a link beneath the home photo and map that looks like this:

This link shows the ratings from two flood risk tools: FEMA flood maps and Flood Factor.

The FEMA flood map ratings use letters to indicate risk level:

• An A or a V — high-risk flood area
• B, C, or X — moderate-to-low-risk area
• D — area that hasn’t been mapped, so the risk is unknown

If you’re intrepid, you can visit FEMA’s flood map service center for maps and data. But FEMA information isn’t available everywhere and is updated only every 5 to 30 years. In addition, it doesn’t factor in rainfall for areas away from major water bodies. In fact, the best person to translate FEMA data is your city or town’s floodplain manager. (More on this below.)

The Flood Factor rating system, developed by nonprofit First Street Foundation, works on a scale of 1 to 10:

• 1 — minimal risk 
• 2 — minor risk 
• 3 to 4 — moderate risk
• 5 to 6 — major risk 
• 7 to 8 — severe risk 
• 9 to 10 — extreme risk

The more consumer-friendly Flood Factor website lets you search by property address. You can see an aerial image of the property and a summary explaining overall flood risk. You can also read about flooding sources like rainfall and historic information. Given its newness, the database is evolving and updated quarterly.