First Street FAQ

Answers to frequently asked questions about First Street features and additional risk information.

The full First Street report provides building-specific, climate-adjusted estimates of damages and potential damages due to a building’s climate risk, and allows users to customize details about a building to get the most accurate estimate of risk. By providing comprehensive damage estimates, property and community levels of risk, access to risk data for commercial buildings, and the ability to personalize features, First Street provides risk information beyond what is freely available on FirstStreet.org.

First Street serves as a comprehensive climate risk assessment tool that can provide one-of-a-kind insights to homeowners, home buyers, commercial real estate owners, investors, designers, and developers. Click here to learn more about the different First Street plans to understand which is best for you.

Where can I see the properties I’ve unlocked?

Once you have created a First Street account, you can access any of your unlocked properties by clicking on Purchased Properties in the drop-down under your user icon on the upper right side of the screen. Be sure that you have signed into your Risk Factor account to view your purchased properties.

How do I unlock a property?

First Street content and features are only viewable to First Street members who unlock properties either through a 7 day free trial or purchases. Reports are available for all properties and each property has a flood, wildfire, wind, and heat report. Once unlocked, members will be able to view all three reports for their property.

You have the option to enter your credit card information or connect your Apple Pay or Google Pay account in order to start a 7 day free trial or purchase a subscription. To save your payment information for future purchases, check your Store credit card for future use.

How long do I have access to a property’s features?

You have access to a property’s First Street report for one year.

Publicly viewable residential properties vs non-publicly viewable commercial properties

Information for commercial or mixed-use properties is only available with First Street. First Street allows you to access additional risk information and features for residential properties.

If you searched for a property that is classified as commercial or mixed-use or you want access to additional information and features for a residential property you must first create a First Street account. By creating a First Street account you can unlock access to a variety of interactive maps to help better understand a building’s risk, estimated damage costs based on a building’s unique risk, and the ability to customize property details to understand how adaptation and mitigation improvements would lower its risk.

How can I reset my password?

If you are unable to remember your password or would simply like to change it there are two options to reset your password:

1. Reset your password from the Account Settings page:

- Click the Edit button under the Password field.
- Fill in the Update your password pop-up form and click Save.

2. Reset your password from the Sign in page:

- Click the Reset here link to reset your password.
- Enter the email address associated with your account and click the Reset now link. A password reset email will be sent to your email address.
- Open the email from Risk Factor and click the Reset password link.
- You will be brought to a password reset page. Enter your new password into the required fields and click Reset password.

How do I cancel my subscription?

You can cancel an active subscription by going to the billing page. There you'll see a card with your current subscription, where you can click "Manage Plan".

Afterwards you'll be taken to a page where your current plan is highlighted, there can click "Cancel Plan" and a dialogue will appear asking for confirmation.

Where does the initial data on property details come from?

The initial property input data shown come from local assessor's offices and our 3rd party data provider Lightbox. However, you can customize this information to see how your home’s specific characteristics affect its risk by adjusting things like building material, number of stories, structure size, and more.

Can I share my unlocked property with someone else?

Although sharing is not included in the base subscription plan, it is available as a paid subscription add-on. This feature enables you to share an unlimited number of unlocked reports with others through personal links that can be viewed for free by those who do not have a subscription.

How can I adjust information on the public site?

You know your property better than anyone! If you have information you think might be helpful to improve our Risk Models, please let us know by submitting a request through our contact forms.

Please note that this information will not change your property's Flood, Fire, Wind, or Heat Factor, but it can help improve the accuracy of our models, and the information shown on Risk Factor.

In order to improve our Flood Model, please reach out if you notice any of the following issues:

Naming Mismatch: Our models match parcel data from official government sources to address data collected from commercial sources. Naming conventions attached to specific parcels and addresses may not exactly match, resulting in naming discrepancies.
Missing Building Footprint: Risk is determined by a home’s building footprint. If the building footprint is missing, the risk is determined to the center of the property parcel. If the building footprint is not near the center of the property, the associated risk statistics may not capture all risks to the building structure. Click Flood Maps and view the Current & Future Risk layer. If the red pin isn’t over a dark grey shape outlining the physical structure of the building, the building footprint is missing. Note, it may be helpful to select the flood likelihood Very regular event - 50% likely to make sure the flood layer is not covering the footprint.

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Incorrect FEMA Zone: If you believe Flood Factor has listed the incorrect FEMA flood zone for your property, please submit a Letter of Map Amendment (LOMA) to our help center. The FEMA zone information listed on First Street is currently an estimated zone. Once submitted through a help center form, we can correct this information.
Missing flood control features: Our team is continuing to conduct research on flood control projects around the country and will be continually updating the model based on new information. If you have knowledge of specific completed projects, precise service area extents-of-flood adaptation infrastructure, or spatial data on flood adaptation infrastructure, please help the team by providing any level of detail you can here.
Missing historic flooding event: Flood Factor uses data from the First Street Foundation, which has modeled 57 major river and storm surge floods in the U.S. from 2001 on, and is continually adding more. If you have knowledge of specific historic flooding, we'd love to hear from you. We will investigate historic flooding in the area further and incorporate new information in future updates as appropriate.