Flood Loss by Building Type: Homes, Rentals and Commercial

Residential against non-residential

Non-residential claims are a small minority of the file, 6.8% of mapped claims, and they are larger at both the median and the mean. The difference between those two ratios is the finding worth holding onto: 1.26 on medians, 1.65 on means. A typical commercial flood claim is only modestly bigger than a typical residential one, but the very large losses in this dataset are overwhelmingly commercial. That is a capacity question rather than an average-job question for anyone sizing a restoration operation. Our guide to commercial water damage restoration covers how scope and downtime change on those buildings.

Median payout ratios differ too, 96.1% on residential claims against 92.3% on non-residential ones. The structural reading is the coverage limit: per FEMA FloodSmart, NFIP types of coverage, NFIP residential building coverage caps at $250,000 while non-residential caps at $500,000, so the two building classes sit differently against their respective ceilings. Our report on the insured flood loss gap works through what the limits do to settlement.

Every occupancy code in the file

Occupancy code	Class	Claims	Median damage	Mean damage	Median payout ratio	Median depth (ft)
11: Single-family residential building	Residential	259,069	$37,332	$59,606	96.4%	1.0
1: Single family residence	Residential	148,766	$32,266	$51,210	96.1%	1.0
18: Non-residential building	Non-residential	21,387	$51,421	$115,297	92.7%	1.0
15: Residential condo association building	Residential	15,593	$70,067	$226,333	97.7%	1.0
12: Residential non-condo building, 2 to 4 units	Residential	11,066	$39,965	$60,489	93.2%	1.0
6: Non-residential business	Non-residential	9,733	$39,989	$90,857	92.1%	1.0
14: Residential mobile or manufactured home	Residential	7,269	$16,971	$29,749	89.4%	1.0
13: Residential non-condo building, 5 or more units	Residential	5,088	$109,620	$175,508	95.1%	1.0
2: Residential building, 2 to 4 units	Residential	5,055	$26,800	$43,645	91.3%	1.0
3: Residential building, more than 4 units	Residential	4,123	$63,434	$123,603	94.2%	1.0
4: Non-residential building	Non-residential	2,311	$23,106	$73,115	88.6%	1.0
16: Single residential unit in a multi-unit building	Residential	1,938	$21,460	$33,840	92.3%	1.0

The largest single pool is code 11, single-family residential building, with 259,069 claims at a median of $37,332. The single-digit and two-digit single-family categories both appear because the file spans the transition to Risk Rating 2.0, so a single-family house can arrive as a code 1 or a code 11 depending on when the policy was rated. We report them separately rather than merging them, because the two schemes define the category slightly differently: the Risk Rating 2.0 definition excludes mobile homes and units inside multi-unit buildings, which have their own codes. Our contents restoration report measures how much of each loss sits in contents rather than the structure.

The codes we will not label

Every occupancy code appearing on at least 200 claims in this sample maps to a published FEMA definition, so this report labels all 491,398 of them from the FEMA OpenFEMA NfipClaims data dictionary rather than inferring any category. Codes below that threshold are left out of the tables entirely rather than grouped into an unverified bucket. If a future retrieval introduces a code we cannot map, it will appear here as unmapped and be excluded from the residential split.

Flood risk does not stop at the zone line

The rated flood zone on a policy is the mapped risk designation for the property. A and V zones are Special Flood Hazard Areas, where flood insurance is mandatory for a federally backed mortgage. B, C and X zones are the moderate and minimal risk designations, where it is not. The common assumption is that claims come from the first group. 26.4% of them do not.

Rated flood zone group	Claims	Share of claims	Median damage	Mean damage	Median payout ratio	Median depth (ft)
High risk, A and V zones	359,798	73.6%	$38,255	$70,597	95.0%	1.0
Moderate and minimal risk, B, C and X zones	129,218	26.4%	$32,440	$55,711	97.7%	1.0

Roughly one claim in 4 comes from a zone where flood insurance was not required. Median damage there is $32,440, which is 15% below the $38,255 median in high-risk zones but not a different order of magnitude. Median recorded water depth is shallower outside the high-risk zones, 1.0 feet against 1.0 feet, which plausibly accounts for much of the damage difference on the evidence in our water depth damage curve report.

There is a selection effect to state plainly. These are claims, so every property in this table was insured. Properties outside a Special Flood Hazard Area are not required to carry flood cover, so the ones that do are a self-selected group, probably skewed towards owners who had already seen water. The share of claims coming from moderate-risk zones is therefore not the share of flood losses occurring there, and the true out-of-zone loss share is likely to be higher, because uninsured out-of-zone damage generates no claim at all.

Zone by zone

Rated flood zone	Group	Claims	Median damage
AE	High risk, A and V zones	303,064	$41,842
X	Moderate and minimal risk, B, C and X zones	113,869	$30,961
A	High risk, A and V zones	20,752	$28,912
VE	High risk, A and V zones	12,887	$20,361
C	Moderate and minimal risk, B, C and X zones	8,063	$36,438
B	Moderate and minimal risk, B, C and X zones	7,286	$48,918
AH	High risk, A and V zones	5,565	$34,476
AO	High risk, A and V zones	2,622	$22,355
A07	High risk, A and V zones	1,517	$14,064
AHB	High risk, A and V zones	1,261	$34,021

The individual codes are worth reading rather than only the grouped totals, because the group medians hide real variation inside them. AE is the workhorse high-risk zone, a Special Flood Hazard Area with a published base flood elevation. X is the single largest moderate-risk code. Coastal V and VE zones carry the highest base flood elevations and the wave action requirement, yet their median building damage is not the highest in the table, which is a reminder that a zone designation describes probability and wave exposure rather than the size of any individual loss.

Data quality and the cleaning applied

Issue	Claims affected	How we handled it
Building damage below $1,000 or absent	135,411	Excluded. Very low damage values behave like placeholders rather than assessments and distort every mean and payout ratio.
No occupancy code	1	Excluded from the occupancy tables, retained for the zone tables.
No classifiable rated flood zone	2,322	Excluded from the zone tables. This covers blank zones and codes that do not begin with A, V, B, C, X or D.
Water depth recorded as exactly 99	13,551	Excluded from every depth column. This is a sentinel value, not a measurement.
Negative water depth	17,085	Excluded from every depth column. The dataset uses negative values for water below the first floor.
Water depth above 20 feet	30,953	Excluded from every depth column. The field runs to several hundred feet, which is not plausible.
No water depth recorded	76,981	Excluded from the depth columns only.

Method

Reproduce this

What this does not show

Questions this report answers

Do commercial buildings suffer worse flood damage than homes?

At the median, only modestly: $45,124 against $35,792 on NFIP claims since 2015 per FEMA data, a factor of 1.26. On means the gap is much wider, 1.65 times, because the largest individual losses in the dataset are overwhelmingly non-residential.

How many flood claims come from outside high-risk flood zones?

26.4% of NFIP claims with a classifiable rated zone and a loss year of 2015 or later come from B, C or X zones, the moderate and minimal risk designations, per FEMA data. That is roughly one claim in 4.

Does being outside a flood zone mean a property is safe?

No. Flood zones describe the probability of flooding and whether insurance is mandatory for a federally backed mortgage, not whether water can reach a building. Median damage on an out-of-zone NFIP claim is $32,440 in FEMA data, and the true out-of-zone loss share is likely higher than the claim share, because out-of-zone properties are the least likely to be insured.

What does occupancy type mean on an NFIP claim?

It is the code describing what kind of building the policy covers: single-family house, two-to-four unit building, condo association building, mobile home, non-residential structure and so on. Legacy single-digit codes and Risk Rating 2.0 two-digit codes both appear in current data, which is why the tables above list a code 1 and a code 11 single-family category separately.

Which building type has the highest median flood damage?

Residential non-condo building, 5 or more units (code 13), at $109,620 median assessed building damage across 5,088 claims in FEMA data since 2015.

Why do some codes appear as unmapped?

Because we only label a code where the published FEMA OpenFEMA NfipClaims data dictionary gives an unambiguous definition. Assigning a category to a code we cannot verify would move the residential split without any basis, so any such code is printed as unmapped and left out of that comparison.

Can I reuse this data?

Yes. The tables and derived figures are released under CC BY 4.0 with attribution to Remediation Insider. The underlying claims data is public and available from FEMA.