HearthDry Research · Original analysis

One in five flood insurance claims is paid nothing

Name: Residential NFIP flood claim outcomes, 2015–2025
Creator: HearthDry
License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

We pulled every residential claim from FEMA’s own National Flood Insurance Program file — 572,863 of them, 2015 through 2025 — and counted what actually happened to each one. 20.3% closed without a dollar paid. The reasons are not what most homeowners expect.

Published 2026-09-10 · Data accessed 2026-09-10 · Free to cite with attribution

Claims analysed: 572,863residential, 2015–2025
Closed without payment: 20.3%116,110 claims
Median payout when paid: $39,440mean $74,108
Median shortfall vs damage: $1,2503.7% of assessed damage

The finding

Flood insurance has a reputation for refusing claims. The data says something more specific and more useful: it refuses about one claim in five, and where FEMA recorded why, 76.8% of refusals come down to three findings — the loss was not a flood, the damage was under the deductible, or the adjuster found no damage to pay for.

None of those is an insurer being difficult. All three are decided before the water arrives, by what the policy says and what the homeowner assumed it said. That is the part a homeowner can still change.

And on the claims it does pay, NFIP pays close to the damage assessed. Across 440,232 paid building claims the median shortfall between recorded damage and amount paid is $1,250, 3.7% of the assessed figure — roughly the deductible. The financial risk in flood insurance is not being underpaid on a covered loss. It is finding out the loss was never covered.

Why claims close without payment

The reasons FEMA recorded, 86,536 refusals

Every closed-without-payment claim carries a reason code. These are FEMA’s own categories, decoded from the published data dictionary. Administrative codes for deleted and misassigned claims are excluded.

Reason recorded	Claims	Share
Not an actual flood	26,989	31.2%
The loss was smaller than the deductible	25,343	29.3%
Other	15,636	18.1%
No demonstrable damage	14,094	16.3%
Homeowner did not pursue the claim	2,684	3.1%
Wind damage, not flood	504	0.6%
Sea wall	367	0.4%
Seepage	208	0.2%
Boat piers	167	0.2%
Damage predates the policy	133	0.2%
Loss already in progress	112	0.1%

“Not an actual flood” is the single largest reason. NFIP covers surface water that inundates two or more acres or two or more properties. Water that came from a burst pipe, a failed water heater, a roof leak or a drain backing up is not a flood, and belongs on the homeowners policy instead. Filing it as a flood claim wastes weeks, and the homeowners claim it should have been has a clock on it. Which policy covers which loss.

By state

Where claims are paid, and how much

States with at least 500 residential claims in the period. Median payout counts only claims that were paid, so a state can pay well and still refuse often.

State	Claims	Paid nothing	Median payout
Florida	188,725	21.2%	$59,200
Texas	140,968	17.6%	$66,253
Louisiana	67,209	18%	$57,668
North Carolina	29,876	17.5%	$16,205
South Carolina	20,203	23.5%	$15,117
New Jersey	12,841	20.9%	$16,000
New York	11,218	24.9%	$14,588
Georgia	7,476	29.3%	$15,250
Pennsylvania	7,300	17.7%	$12,922
California	6,656	36.1%	$19,725
Virginia	6,058	25.5%	$13,325
Missouri	5,886	14.4%	$20,488
Kentucky	5,785	13.6%	$17,949
Alabama	5,582	22.9%	$13,204
Illinois	4,946	23.5%	$9,197
Mississippi	4,911	21%	$13,745
Tennessee	3,561	17.2%	$17,744
Massachusetts	3,524	25%	$12,402
Michigan	3,167	26.6%	$10,886
Washington	3,059	19.5%	$21,553
Maryland	2,806	32.1%	$8,874
Ohio	2,759	25.6%	$9,211
West Virginia	2,630	15.9%	$15,419
Arkansas	2,409	15.6%	$26,603
Indiana	2,134	19.3%	$13,961

Highest refusal rates: Colorado (52.6%), Arizona (39.5%), New Mexico (37.5%), California (36.1%), Minnesota (33.7%). The pattern is inland states where a large share of claims are small rainfall losses that land under the deductible, rather than coastal states where storm surge produces unambiguous, expensive floods.

By cause of loss

How the water arrived decides whether you are paid

Cause recorded	Claims	Paid nothing	Median payout
Accumulated rainfall or snowmelt	239,270	14.3%	$37,000
Stream, river or lake overflow	124,862	8.5%	$39,216
Tidal water overflow	101,647	13.7%	$45,826
Other causes	95,824	50.5%	$40,104
Alluvial fan overflow	1,238	14.4%	$50,118
Remote adjustment	516	16.1%	$10,213
Closed basin lake	340	20%	$59,554

The line in this table is “other causes”: 50.5% of those claims are paid nothing, against 8.5% for a river or lake overflow. “Other” is where a loss lands when the adjuster cannot fit it into a flood category — and a loss that does not fit a flood category is usually not a flood.

By year of loss

Eleven years of outcomes

Year	Claims	Paid nothing	Median payout
2015	31,420	24.9%	$15,374
2016	79,726	17.4%	$43,679
2017	134,361	21.5%	$61,558
2018	39,248	21%	$17,336
2019	31,543	17.2%	$27,905
2020	30,289	25.6%	$14,257
2021	42,763	24.2%	$23,709
2022	56,369	21.4%	$56,075
2023	19,634	23.2%	$31,798
2024	95,773	15.6%	$70,523
2025	11,737	19.1%	$29,471

Median payout tracks the storms, not the policy: the high years are hurricane years, when the typical claim is a severe one. The refusal rate barely moves — it sits between 14% and 26% every single year.

What a homeowner should take from this

1
Know which policy your water belongs to, before it happens.
Water from outside that rose is a flood claim. Water from a pipe, an appliance, a roof or a drain is a homeowners claim. The largest single reason claims are paid nothing is that the two were confused. The full distinction.
2
Check your deductible against the losses you are actually likely to have.
Nearly a third of recorded refusals are losses that came in under the deductible. A $10,000 deductible on a house whose realistic flood loss is a wet basement is a policy that will never pay.
3
Photograph and document before anything is touched.
“No demonstrable damage” is the third-largest reason. Adjusters arrive days later, after the water has gone and the carpet has been pulled. What to record, in what order.
4
Start drying immediately, whichever policy applies.
Every policy requires you to prevent further damage, and mold begins within 24 to 48 hours. Waiting for an adjuster before drying is how a covered claim becomes a disputed one.

If water is in the house right now, the drying starts before the claim does. An IICRC-certified restoration company can be on site the same day and will document moisture readings your insurer will ask for either way.

(888) 840-6512

Methodology

Source: OpenFEMA NfipClaims v3 (NFIP Redacted Claims) , FEMA’s public record of every claim paid under the National Flood Insurance Program. Accessed 2026-09-10. We downloaded 626,886 claims with a date of loss from 1 January 2015 onward and analysed the 572,863 of them on residential occupancy codes.

“Closed without payment” means the building and contents payments both recorded zero. Reason codes and cause-of-loss codes are decoded from FEMA’s published data dictionary; the two administrative codes for deleted and misassigned claims are excluded from the reason table. Medians count only paid claims, because including zeros would describe a different thing.

Two exclusions, both deliberate. Loss year 2026 is excluded: 46% of that year’s zero-paid claims carry no decision reason at all, against 3–14% in every settled year, which means they are still open, and an open claim cannot be told apart from a refused one in this file. Water depth was tested and dropped: 241,794 residential rows record a depth of exactly zero and FEMA’s own field note says some depths were filed in feet rather than inches, so the bands cannot be trusted to mean what they say.

The analysis scripts are nfip-harvest.mjs and nfip-analyse.mjs. Anyone can reproduce these figures from the same public file.

Cite this research

HearthDry (2026). One in five flood insurance claims is paid nothing: an analysis of 572,863 residential NFIP claims, 2015–2025. https://hearthdry.com/research/nfip-flood-claim-payouts

Journalists and researchers may reproduce any figure or table here with attribution and a link. For the underlying breakdown by state, cause or year, or for comment from our reviewers, write to press@hearthdry.com.

This page is a statistical summary of a public dataset. It is not insurance advice, and it does not describe the terms of any particular policy. Read your declarations page, or ask a licensed adjuster in your state.

Flood claim questions, answered from the data

How many flood insurance claims are denied?

Of 572,863 residential NFIP flood claims filed between 2015 and 2025, 116,110 closed without a single dollar paid — 20.3%, or about one in five. "Denied" is the wrong word for most of them.

Where FEMA recorded a reason, 76.8% fall into three categories that are the policy working exactly as written: the loss was not a flood under the NFIP definition, the damage came in under the deductible, or the adjuster found no damage to pay for.