Skip to main content

Methodology

How we classify and verify the data

Flood-disclosure law is YMYL content — your money and your home are on the line. Here's exactly how we built the dataset, so you can judge it for yourself.

The four disclosure levels

We classify every jurisdiction into one of four levels. These are doctrinal categories — descriptions of the legal regime — not a safety rating. A buyer-beware state isn't “worse”; it shifts the burden onto the buyer.

Flood-specific disclosure

The statute or the state-mandated form has dedicated flood questions — flood-zone status, flood history, prior claims, or flood-insurance history.

General disclosure

A general property-condition disclosure captures flooding through a water/drainage or known-defect item, but has no dedicated flood-zone question.

Buyer-beware (caveat emptor)

No mandatory statutory seller disclosure. Common-law duties apply — the seller can't actively conceal or misrepresent a known defect, and must answer a direct question honestly.

No disclosure statute

No statewide seller property-condition disclosure statute identified. Common-law anti-fraud duties still apply.

Citation hierarchy — primary sources first

  1. Tier 1 — Primary. State legislature / codified-statute pages, state real-estate-commission mandated forms, and federal primary sources (FEMA, Congressional Research Service). This is the load-bearing citation on every row.
  2. Tier 2 — Mirrors.When a state's official .gov page was unreachable, we corroborated the codified text against legislature mirrors (Justia, FindLaw, Cornell LII, onecle) plus the official form. Rows resting on these are honestly marked corroborated (secondary).
  3. Supplementary only — never load-bearing.Aggregators like the NRDC's “How States Stack Up,” Nolo, and law-firm explainers were used to cross-check, never as the primary citation for a legal claim.

What the confidence labels mean

Every state row carries an honest confidence label. Of 51 jurisdictions, 36 are primary-source verified (read directly from the cited primary source) and 15 are corroborated (secondary)(primary page unreachable; text confirmed via mirrors + official forms). We do not pretend a secondary row is primary. A few rows have no statute URL at all — those are genuine “no statute exists” findings where the load-bearing fact is the absence of a mandate.

We do not fabricate statute numbers, dollar amounts, dates, or remedies. Where a detail couldn't be confirmed, the row says so rather than guessing.

How often we refresh

State legislatures amend flood-disclosure law without much notice — Florida's HB 1049 and New York's 2023 amendment are recent proof. We carry a last-verified date on every row and review the dataset on a quarterly cadence, with priority re-checks after hurricane season and any reported legislative change. Updates are logged on the changelog.

Editorial review

We are recruiting a licensed real-estate attorney or title-insurance professional to review these summaries. Until that review is in place, treat every page as informational only.

Professional review in progress

We are recruiting a licensed real-estate attorney or title professional to review these summaries before this site applies for advertising. Until then, treat every page as informational only.