Flood & Water
Special Flood Hazard Area (SFHA)
A FEMA-mapped zone with a 1%+ annual chance of flooding — the trigger for a lender's mandatory flood-insurance requirement.
A Special Flood Hazard Area (SFHA) is any area FEMA's National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) maps show has at least a 1% chance of flooding in a given year — often called the "100-year floodplain." On a FEMA flood map, SFHA zones are labeled with an A or V prefix (A, AE, AH, AO, V, VE); zones starting with B, C, or X sit outside the SFHA.
The SFHA designation isn't a prediction that a home will flood this year — it's a probability band FEMA re-maps periodically as topography, development, and hydrology data change. A property can move in or out of an SFHA on a map update with no work done on the home itself.
Why it matters
- Federal law requires a lender to make flood insurance a condition of the loan for any federally backed mortgage on a home in an SFHA.
- Flood damage is excluded from a standard homeowners policy — SFHA or not — so coverage has to be bought separately, usually through the NFIP or a private flood carrier.
- A remapping can add or drop the requirement on a home you already own, changing your insurance cost with no notice from the home itself.
How CoverGuard uses this
A CoverGuard Record pulls the FEMA NFHL flood zone directly and flags SFHA status; the lender flood-compliance tracker uses that same zone to drive its verification workflow.
Go deeper: read the full guide →
Related terms
FEMA Flood Zone
The letter-coded designation on a FEMA flood map (A, AE, V, X, …) that states a property's modeled flood risk band.
Difference in Conditions (DIC) Policy
A supplemental policy that fills the coverage gap a narrower primary policy leaves — most commonly paired with the California FAIR Plan.
Insurability
Whether a property can realistically be insured at all, and how hard that placement will be — a distinct question from what it will cost.
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