Flood Zones
in Shelby County,
Tennessee
If a letter from your mortgage company says your home is now in a flood zone, this is what changed, how to check it yourself, and what it should cost.
Check The Zone Yourself
Your lender's letter names a zone. Put the address in and FEMA will tell you the zone it sits in, whether a lender normally requires cover there, and what has been claimed in that kind of zone here.
Flood claims in Shelby County, by the numbers
Shelby County's flood history is not a matter of opinion — every NFIP claim ever filed here is in the federal record. This is what it holds.
- 1,014
- flood claims on record since 1978
- $24.9M
- paid out, across 778 of them
- $32,005
- average paid claim
- 48%
- of claims were rated outside the high-risk zone
- 2010
- worst year: 121 claims, $7.2M paid
Computed from FEMA's OpenFEMA NFIP redacted claims dataset: every claim recorded in Shelby County with a loss date from 1978 through 2025, counting building and contents payments. The 48% is the 484 claims rated in a moderate-to-low-risk zone as a share of all 1,014 — the same basis as FEMA's national 29%, and the more conservative one, since 195 claims carry no rated zone at all.
What a flood map revision actually is
FEMA maps every county for flood risk and redraws those maps as the ground changes — new subdivisions, new drainage, new survey data, a creek that has been rechannelled. The result is a Flood Insurance Rate Map, and each panel of it carries its own effective date.
Shelby County has 89 panels. Fifty-seven of them took effect on September 28, 2007, and 32 were revised on February 6, 2013. So two homes a few miles apart can be reading maps drawn six years apart, which is exactly why a county-level date is not an answer for a specific address.
A revision does not change whether your house floods. It changes what the map says about your house, and that is what your lender reads.
How to check your own flood zone
Start with the address box above. It asks FEMA's National Flood Hazard Layer for that exact point — the same record a lender's flood determination is drawn from — and tells you the zone, whether a lender normally requires cover there, and what has been claimed in that kind of zone locally. It takes a few seconds and we keep nothing.
A zone beginning with A or V is a Special Flood Hazard Area — the high-risk designation lenders act on. X, B or C are the moderate-to-low risk zones.
Where the risk sits in Shelby County
The mapped floodplain follows the water: the Mississippi along the western edge, then the Wolf River and the Loosahatchie across the north of the county, and Nonconnah Creek along the south. Roughly a quarter of the county's area falls inside a mapped high-risk zone, measured off FEMA's own polygons.
Nonconnah Creek is one of three basins the Army Corps of Engineers is studying for flood control, alongside Horn Lake Creek and the Coldwater River in DeSoto County.
The claim record also says where it has actually happened. Of the 1,011 Shelby County claims that carry a ZIP code, 151 — roughly one in seven — were filed from 38053 in Millington, and they account for $6.5 million of the $24.9 million paid out countywide. Behind Millington come 38134, 38127 and 38128 across northern Memphis, and then Germantown's 38138, which has filed 53 claims and collected $2.0 million. Five ZIP codes hold 41% of every flood claim in the county.
What "newly required" means for your mortgage
If a remap puts your home in a high-risk zone and your mortgage is federally backed, your lender will normally require flood coverage and keep requiring it for the life of the loan. That requirement comes from the mortgage company, not from us.
Lender letters often arrive with a quoted premium attached, or with an offer to force-place a policy if you do nothing. Force-placed coverage is bought on your behalf, at the lender's price, and it usually protects the lender's interest rather than yours. You are entitled to buy your own policy instead.
Two things worth knowing before you accept a number: the price in the letter is frequently an NFIP figure, and a private flood policy on the same property often costs less with higher limits.
One timing rule is worth knowing too. An NFIP policy normally waits 30 days to take effect — but there is no wait at all when the cover is bought in connection with a mortgage, and only a one-day wait when a property has just been mapped into a high-risk zone and the policy is bought within 12 months of that change. If a remap is what brought you here, that second rule is probably yours.
What Shelby County's claim record actually shows
Across the National Flood Insurance Program's records, Shelby County has filed 1,014 flood claims. 778 were paid, for $24.9 million in total — an average of $32,005 per paid claim.
That is the number worth sitting with. A flood is not a wet carpet and a dehumidifier. In this county it is, on average, a thirty-two thousand dollar repair that a homeowners policy does not pay a cent of.
The claims cluster into a handful of bad weeks: 2010 and 2014 account for 240 between them, with 1979, 2011 and 1987 behind. Flood risk here is not a slow drip. It is four decades punctuated by a few storms, and cover either existed before them or it did not.
484 of those 1,014 claims — 48% — were rated in a moderate or low-risk zone rather than a high-risk one. FEMA's national figure is 29%. In Shelby County it is very nearly half.
Private flood or the NFIP in Shelby County
The NFIP caps building coverage at $250,000 and contents at $100,000, settles contents at actual cash value, and makes a new policy wait 30 days. For some properties it is still the right answer — an NFIP policy can be passed to the next buyer, which matters if you are selling.
Private carriers price each property on its own merits instead of from a federal rate table. That tends to favour homes just outside a mapped zone, or newly inside one, which describes a great many Shelby County addresses. Private policies commonly exceed the NFIP limits, settle contents at replacement cost, add loss of use, and take effect 10 days after you buy — with no wait at all if you are closing on the home.
We quote both and put them side by side. That is the point of an independent agency on this question: nobody here is paid to prefer one answer.
What to do next
Most Mid-South homes can be quoted online in a few minutes. If you would rather talk it through, call (901) 402-0779.