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The National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) was created in 1968 and allows homeowners, renters, and businesses to purchase flood insurance from the federal government. During the summer of 2019, without compromising privacy, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) released two datasets containing roughly 50 million flood insurance policy observations (beginning in 2009) and 2.5 million flood insurance claims (beginning in 1970). Researchers can now download and evaluate the entire policies and claims datasets in machine-readable format, bypassing the complex request procedures of the past. We explore what is included in this policy and claims data and how they might be used to examine flood insurance related topics. We provide real estate academics and industry professionals with the details of the 44 usable policy data variables and the 37 usable claims data variables, which we group into seven categories: Locational, Structural, Occupancy, Policy Terms, Zone/Elevation/Rating, Premiums, and Claims. In an effort to aid researchers with the initial complexities of working with the data, we provide sample R-code that can be altered to analyze NFIP data. Finally, for illustration, we demonstrate how the NFIP data can be merged with data from both the American Community Survey and Zillow to study the determinants of flood insurance take-up. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although some have proposed eliminating the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) to reduce government expenditures, other alternatives exist that could reduce the cost of the program and increase its viability, such as increasing deductibles, which may increase participation and revenue. The​ recently released FIMA NFIP Redacted Policies Data Set provides unprecedented opportunities to examine homeowner deductible choices for flood insurance policies using policy-level data. The menu of deductibles currently ranges from $1,000 to $10,000 in Special Flood Hazard Areas (SFHAs), but until April 1, 2015, the maximum deductible was $5,000. Using a matched sample of 252,280 SFHA policies that were active for the 2013–2019 time period, we provide insight regarding characteristics of homeowners who chose the maximum deductible as well as those who switched from the $5,000 to the new $10,000 deductible. Consistent with nudge theory and stickiness, we show that the majority of the homeowners accept the default deductible option. Individuals in high-income and high-premium areas were more likely to select the maximum dedu​ctible. Level of education and past flood events do not impact whether people decide to select the maximum deductible option. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]