What’s Your Home’s Flood Risk Score?

A shortcoming of FEMA flood maps is they’re dated, look backward, and don’t account for the impact of climate changes since they were drawn. However, starting this week every U.S. homeowner and homebuyer will be able to see a new analysis of their property’s flood risk.

A nonprofit research and technology group, First Street Foundation launched an interactive website offering flood risk data on more than 142 million homes and properties across the country in June. Now Realtor.com, one of the nation’s largest home listing sites, will put those scores on all of its listings.

First Street, working with more than 80 scientists and researchers, is remapping America’s flood risk in an effort to educate homeowners, buyers and the greater real estate industry. It assigns a flood score to every property.

“We’re basically building flood models that calculate the past, present and future flood risk for every home in the country,” said Matthew Eby, founder and executive director of the First Street Foundation. “By integrating Flood Factor into Realtor.com’s platform, we will not only reach millions of people on a daily basis, we will do so when they need it most — when they are buying or selling a home.”

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