Flood insurance coverage limits: the most a federal policy can pay

The limits by type of building

The federal policy has no menu of plans. The owner picks two amounts, one for the structure and one for what is inside, each up to a ceiling fixed by the statute and repeated in the regulation and Table 24 of the Flood Insurance Manual. The ceiling depends on the occupancy of the building, not on its value.

One line often surprises owners of apartment buildings: the building limit doubles once the property has five units or more, but the contents limit stays at the household figure. The larger contents ceiling is reserved for non-residential buildings, and for tenants of those buildings, who can insure their own contents per unit.

How many owners buy the maximum

In the OpenFEMA policy file, the median single-family policy on July 31, 2026 carried $250,000 of building coverage and $100,000 of contents, which are the two ceilings. 76 % of single-family policies were written at the full building limit, and 79 % included some contents coverage, so about one policy in five protects the walls but not the furniture, appliances and clothes. Contents is priced separately, and its share of the policy is the owner's choice.

The ceiling is below what many insured houses would cost to rebuild. In FEMA's 2023 single-family tables, the median replacement cost of insured homes was $425,266, against a building limit of $250,000. For a house in that middle, a total loss leaves a gap that no choice of deductible can close.

A large loss, worked through

Take a house that floods to the ceiling: rebuilding costs $400,000 and $150,000 of belongings are ruined, with the $2,000 deductible on each coverage. The building payment stops at $250,000 minus the deductible, $250,000; the contents payment stops at $100,000 minus the deductible, $100,000. The policy pays $350,000 in all. Of the $200,000 left to the owner, $196,000 is the part above the legal ceilings and the rest is the two deductibles. The calculator at the top of the page runs the same arithmetic on any figures.

The deductibles

Each policy has two deductibles, one taken from the building payment and one from the contents payment, under 42 U.S.C. 4013(d) and Table 26 of the manual. For a home, the lowest building deductible is $1,000 on smaller building amounts and $1,250 on larger ones, and the options rise in steps from $2,000 to $10,000. Contents deductibles run from $1,000 to $10,000, and a contents-only policy, the kind a renter buys, has a minimum of $1,000. A higher deductible lowers the premium. Lowering the deductible later is one of the changes that falls outside the yearly increase cap.

The deductible matters most on the small and middle-sized losses that make up most claims. On a $60,000 building loss with $15,000 of contents and the $10,000 deductible on each, the policy pays $55,000: twice $10,000 stays with the owner. The national median paid single-family claim for floods of 2016 to 2025 was $42,494, building and contents together, as the claims page details.

Increased Cost of Compliance

When a community finds that repairing a flooded building would cost 50 percent or more of its market value before the flood, the building must be brought up to the community's floodplain rules. Increased Cost of Compliance pays up to $30,000 toward elevating it, relocating it, demolishing it or, mostly for non-residential buildings, floodproofing it. FEMA adjusts that claim separately from the flood damage claim. The coverage is built into the policy: its premium is 1.9 % of the building and contents premiums, capped at $75, and the median single-family policy paid $22 for it in 2026.

Basements and what the policy leaves out

Below-grade space has narrower cover. FloodSmart lists personal property kept in basements among what the policy does not protect, while the building coverage includes furnaces, water heaters, foundation walls and staircases. A finished basement with furniture and electronics is therefore mostly outside the contents coverage, whatever amount was bought.

What exceeds the federal ceilings is not covered by the federal policy at all. Some private insurers sell flood coverage above the federal limits, often called excess flood insurance, and some private policies replace the federal one entirely (private flood insurance). A licensed agent can say what is offered for a given address.