Flood Claims Denied Most Often Inland: Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico Top HearthDry FEMA Study
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DALLAS - Txylo -- How often a flood insurance claim is paid depends heavily on where the house is. HearthDry analysed every residential claim in FEMA's National Flood Insurance Program file from 2015 through 2025, 572,863 claims, and compared states.

The highest shares of claims closed without payment were in Colorado (52.6%), Arizona (39.5%), New Mexico (37.5%), California (36.1%) and Minnesota (33.7%). The pattern is inland states, where a large share of claims are small rainfall losses that fall under the deductible, rather than coastal states, where storm surge produces clear and expensive floods.

Florida, the state with the most claims (188,725), closed 21.2% without payment and paid a median of $59,200 on the claims it paid. Texas closed 17.6% without payment, with a median payout of $66,253. Among the 25 states with the most claims, Kentucky had the lowest refusal share, at 13.6%.

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Nationally, 20.3% of claims closed without a dollar paid. Where FEMA recorded a reason, the largest was that the loss was not an actual flood, such as water from a burst pipe or a roof leak, which belongs on a homeowners policy instead.

The state table, the reasons FEMA recorded and the methodology are free to cite with attribution: https://hearthdry.com/research/nfip-flood-claim-payouts