Florida Flood Risk Hidden from Homeowners While Real Estate Industry Blocks Disclosure
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
November 12, 2025
Contact: contact@insurancefairnessproject.com
Florida Flood Risk Hidden from Homeowners While Real Estate Industry Blocks Disclosure
November 12, 2025 — A new investigation from the Miami Herald’s “Floods of Trouble” series exposes a long-running effort by powerful real estate interests and local officials to keep critical flood data out of public view, leaving Florida families in the dark about the true risks facing their homes. Public catastrophe models for flooding, like the ones enacted in California for wildfires, can serve as a check on the proprietary “black box” risk prediction models insurers use to justify rate increases and to conceal information from customers about how to reduce risk.
The Herald’s reporting reveals that detailed records of neighborhood and property-level flooding, information that could protect buyers and guide flood-control planning, have been deliberately withheld for years. Homebuyers are often unaware that the properties they’re purchasing have repeatedly flooded, while developers and some cities, eager to preserve property values and tax revenues, have resisted greater transparency.
At the same time, a new Wall Street Journal investigation highlights how millions of American homeowners nationwide face hidden flood dangers not captured on FEMA’s official maps. While FEMA identifies about eight million homes in high-risk flood zones, new modeling shows nearly 13 million additional properties face similar levels of risk without being mapped, meaning families are unprotected, uninsured, and unaware.
“These reports show a disturbing pattern: flood risk is being hidden to protect profits while putting people in danger,” said Lizzy Price, a spokesperson for the Insurance Fairness Project. “Homeowners deserve to know the truth about where it floods. Instead, powerful real estate interests and short-sighted local officials have worked to bury the data leaving families paying the price when the waters rise.”
The Insurance Fairness Project warned that without full public disclosure and updated mapping, millions of homeowners could face devastating financial losses as climate change drives more frequent and severe flooding.
“People can’t prepare for risks that they don’t know exist,” Price added. “Hiding flood risk might inflate the market in the short term, but it destroys trust, devastates communities, and leaves families with nowhere to turn when disaster strikes.”
The Insurance Fairness Project is calling on state and federal officials to require transparent flood history reporting at the property level and ensure FEMA’s maps reflect real, current risk.
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