Not after a named storm. Not after surge. Not after your street fills up like a bowl from a stalled tropical system dropping 15 inches overnight.
Flood is a specifically excluded peril on every standard Florida homeowners policy. Always has been. And most Florida homeowners still do not know that.
A & J Insurance Services places NFIP, private flood, and excess flood coverage across Florida. Independent agency. No agency fee. In business since 2007. Real people who answer the phone.
Reviewed July 2026 · Roberto Ramos Jr., Licensed 2-20 P&C Agent · FL License #P111106 · Serving Palm Beach County & all of Florida since 2007
Here is how it plays out.
Water enters from the ground up. Storm surge. A canal that overtops. Streets that can’t drain fast enough. One inch of floodwater can cause roughly $25,000 in damage. Not from a catastrophic storm. From one inch.
Your homeowners policy responds to that with nothing.
And FEMA disaster assistance is not a substitute. The average FEMA individual assistance payout in Florida over the last decade is approximately $5,100. The average NFIP flood claim payout in Florida over the same period is $28,100.
That roughly $23,000 gap is yours to cover. Out of pocket. While your home is uninhabitable.
Flood insurance exists specifically to close that gap. There is no other way to close it.
This is the line almost every Floridian has heard. Almost no one believes it applies to them personally. The data says otherwise.
FEMA’s own records show that nearly one-third of all NFIP flood insurance claims come from properties outside high-risk flood zones. Homeowners who did everything right. Who checked the map. Who got told at closing they didn’t need it.
Florida is flat. The drainage systems were not built for what modern storms deliver. A tropical system can stall over South Florida and flood neighborhoods that have never flooded before. And when that happens, the letter on your FEMA map does not matter at all.
The National Flood Insurance Program is backed by the federal government and placed through licensed agents via Write-Your-Own carriers. It is the most widely known option and for many Florida homeowners it is a solid starting point.
Private flood is sold by private carriers (both admitted and surplus-lines) under Florida law and replaces your NFIP policy entirely. It is not layered on top. Florida has 35 active private flood writers.
Private policies can offer higher limits. Some include automatic replacement-cost contents coverage instead of NFIP’s actual cash value settlement. Waiting periods are often shorter… commonly 7 days on select products, though this varies by carrier. Some products require no elevation certificate.
The tradeoff: a private carrier can non-renew your policy. The federal NFIP cannot.
Whether private or NFIP makes more sense depends on your property, your zone, and what you need covered. That is the conversation we have with you.
NFIP caps at $250,000 for your structure. If your home would cost $500,000 to rebuild, that policy leaves $250,000 uncovered after a major flood. Excess flood insurance sits on top of your NFIP or private policy and covers the gap between your base policy’s limit and your home’s actual rebuild value.
Florida law explicitly authorizes excess flood coverage. Six carriers are specifically approved by Florida regulators to write excess-of-NFIP policies. Excess flood carries no statutory maximum — it stacks to close the gap between your base policy and your home’s full rebuild value, subject to underwriting.
Most competitors treat excess flood as a luxury-home product. It is not. Any home with a rebuild value above $250,000 has a gap. Excess flood exists to close it.
If you are in Citizens Property Insurance (Florida’s state-backed insurer), you are likely required to carry a separate flood policy already. Citizens has been phasing in a flood insurance requirement since January 2024:
If your property is inside a Special Flood Hazard Area, the requirement already applies to you regardless of your home’s value. Not sure if this applies to your policy? Call us. We check it for you at no charge.
A FEMA flood map update took effect December 20, 2024 across Palm Beach County. More than 16,000 parcels saw their Base Flood Elevation increase by one foot or more. Some properties moved into higher-risk zones. Others saw their premiums recalculate.
If you own property in Palm Beach County and have not reviewed your flood zone since early 2024, your designation may have changed. The only way to know for sure is to check.
FEMA fully implemented a new pricing approach called Risk Rating 2.0 between October 2021 and April 2023. It replaced the old flat zone-based pricing with individual property risk calculations… factoring in your home’s specific elevation, distance to water, and flood frequency.
In practice: some properties saw premiums drop. Many saw them rise significantly. If your NFIP premium has gone up sharply over the last few years and nobody has explained why, that is exactly the kind of conversation we have every day.
NFIP was reauthorized through September 30, 2026. Congress must act before that deadline. As of this writing, the program is active and writing policies. A federal advisory council issued a recommendation in May 2026 to shrink or eventually privatize the program… but that is an unenacted advisory recommendation. Not a law. We are monitoring this and will contact affected clients if anything changes.
Since October 1, 2024, Florida law (F.S. §689.302) requires home sellers to disclose three things before a contract is signed:
If you are buying, selling, or simply want to understand the flood history of the home you are in, this law matters.
A separate Florida law effective October 1, 2025 (F.S. §83.512) requires landlords to disclose known flood history, prior claims, and prior disaster assistance to tenants signing leases of one year or more. This is a different statute from the seller-disclosure law. Different obligated party. Different effective date.
This is one of the most overlooked gaps in all of Florida insurance.
Your landlord’s flood policy covers the building. The structure. Their investment. It does not cover your furniture, your electronics, your clothing, your appliances, or anything else you own inside that unit.
If flood water comes through… and surge does not care what floor you are on in a ground-level building… your belongings are on you.
There is no single honest answer to this question. Any website that gives you a flat number without asking about your property is guessing.
Florida NFIP premiums vary based on your flood zone, your property’s elevation, its distance to water, its construction type, the coverage limit you choose, and whether you go NFIP, private, or excess. Premiums in lower-risk areas run well under $1,000 a year. In high-risk coastal zones they can reach several thousand.
A few things that can lower your premium:
Not a portal. Not a quote bot. Not a 1-800 number that puts you on hold and reads from a script.
Roberto has been placing flood insurance in Florida since 2007. He has been through the storms. Literally. He knows the difference between NFIP and private flood and excess. He can access multiple markets through carrier relationships and a broker network. And there is no agency fee for any of it.
We are not locked into one program or one price. NFIP if that is the right fit. Private flood if your coverage need calls for it. Excess flood if your home’s value creates a gap above the NFIP cap. We match you to the right path. Not the one that is easiest to explain.
Waiting periods. Actual cash value versus replacement cost on contents. What NFIP excludes. Where the $250,000 cap creates a gap. What excess coverage does and whether you need it.
Most agents hand you a policy and say “you are covered.” We sit with you and walk through exactly what you have, what it covers, what it does not, and what would actually happen the day you needed to make a claim. When you leave that conversation you know exactly what you have. Not roughly. Exactly.
No agency fee. The service is completely free to you. We are compensated by the carriers when we place coverage. That never changes what we recommend. Our business runs on referrals and we protect that by always doing right by the client first.
Flood claims are complicated. Wind versus water disputes after a hurricane. Carriers disagreeing about what caused the damage. Adjusters who are slow or unresponsive.
We walk you through the process before you file. We help you understand what your policy covers so you know what to expect going in. And we are available when you call. You are not navigating that alone.
There are homeowners in Florida right now who believe they are fine… because they are not in a flood zone, because their neighborhood has never flooded before, because the cost did not seem worth it when they ran the numbers years ago.
Some of them are right. Some of them are going to find out differently.
Flood coverage in Florida is not complicated to get. It takes one phone call. We look at your property, your zone, your home’s value, and what coverage you actually need. We shop the options. We explain everything in plain English. We get you covered. No pressure. No upsell. No agency fee.
If you already have flood coverage, let us review it. The $250,000 NFIP cap, the actual cash value contents settlement, the exclusion for living expenses, the gap between your policy limit and your home’s rebuild value… these are things worth knowing before you need to make a claim.
We have been protecting Florida families since 2007. We have been through the storms. We know what adequate flood coverage looks like. And we know what it looks like when a family discovers after the fact that they did not have enough. Let us make sure that does not happen to you.
