What flood claims actually pay where you live
Two arguments happen in every flood conversation: whether it is worth buying, and which deductible to take. This settles the second one with the claims that have already been paid in your county.
14,727 of the paid flood claims on record in Miami-Dade were smaller than a $5,000 deductible. On those, the policy would have paid nothing and the whole repair would have been yours.
Counted from 36,719 claims that actually paid, out of 62,027 records. A claim record is not a payment: many close at zero.
Talk it through with an agentPaid flood claims in Miami-Dade, by what they paid
Source: FEMA OpenFEMA, NFIP redacted claims, retrieved 2026-09-07. Building and contents payments are added together.
How this is calculated
Every paid flood claim on record for your county is counted, back to the beginning of the dataset, with building and contents payments added together. The bands are drawn at the deductible amounts people actually choose, so the headline share is exact rather than an interpolation. A claim is counted as smaller than your deductible only when its whole band is.
What this cannot know
This is history, not a forecast, and it is the county rather than your street. Older claims are in the dollars of their year, so the real cost of an equivalent repair today is higher. It also cannot tell you what your own flood deductible options are, which depend on the carrier and on whether the policy is NFIP or private. It says nothing about wind or hurricane deductibles, which are a different policy entirely.
Work it out before anybody sells you anything
Four calculators that run in your browser, a page for every situation Florida puts people in, and the claims data for your own county. All of it free, and none of it behind a form. The form is for the other half of the job: when you have read enough and want a person on the phone.
Leave a name and a number and a licensed Florida agent gets in touch. No obligation, and no call from six companies you have never heard of.
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