Ninety six percent of Punta Gorda sits inside a special flood hazard area and half the lots have wetland mapped on them, not near them. It is the most exposed market we have measured in Florida on both counts.
Check any Punta Gorda lot in secondsFlood zone, wetlands, soil, owner and zoning, in one search.See how it worksWe sampled 121 points on an even grid across Punta Gorda on 15 September 2026 and ran each against the same public layers the app queries: FEMA's National Flood Hazard Layer, the US Fish and Wildlife National Wetlands Inventory on the point and within 500 feet, and the USDA soil survey. Soil figures come from 104 of those points, because the survey does not cover open water. These are measured numbers, not estimates.
FEMA returned an answer for 117 of the 121 points and the flood percentages are of those 117. The rest are open water, which is Charlotte Harbor.
Most markets we measure have single digit on-lot wetland. Port St. Lucie is nine percent. Palm Bay is thirteen. Cape Coral, which we called the wettest coastal market for weeks, is twenty nine.
Punta Gorda is fifty percent. Half the points we sampled had wetland mapped directly on them by the National Wetlands Inventory.
That changes what due diligence means here. In most markets you are checking whether wetland is near enough to matter. In Punta Gorda the base case is that it is on the parcel, and the question is where the line runs and what Charlotte County will ask for. A delineation is not an edge case here, it is the normal cost of doing business.
Ninety two percent Zone AE, four percent Zone VE, four percent Zone X. Ninety six percent inside a special flood hazard area.
The VE points matter out of proportion to their share. VE is the coastal high hazard zone, which adds wave action on top of the base flood elevation and brings the strictest construction requirements and the highest premiums on the map.
Punta Gorda sits on Charlotte Harbor at the mouth of the Peace River. The flood map is not a surprise, but four percent Zone X means that finding a lot outside the hazard area is not a strategy you can run here.
Thirty six percent very poorly drained, thirty six percent poorly drained, twenty nine percent somewhat poorly drained. Nothing in the sample drained well or even moderately well. The median seasonal high water table sat six inches down.
Wetland position first, because at fifty percent on-lot the delineation is usually the biggest variable in the deal. Then the flood zone and specifically whether it is VE rather than AE. Then utilities. Charlotte County publishes its parcel, utility and scrub jay layers and the app reads all of them for the exact parcel.
Almost all of it is in a hazard area. Of 121 evenly sampled points on 15 September 2026, FEMA answered for 117: 92% came back Zone AE, 4% Zone VE and 4% Zone X. That puts 96% inside a special flood hazard area, the highest of any Florida market we have measured. The VE points are coastal high hazard, which adds wave action to the base flood elevation.
On half the lots, not just near them. 50% of sampled points had wetland mapped on the point itself, by far the highest on-lot figure we have measured anywhere, and 93% had wetland on the lot or within 500 feet. Most markets sit in single digits or low twenties for on-lot wetland.
Completely. Every soil sample came back somewhat poorly drained or worse: 36% very poorly drained, 36% poorly drained and 29% somewhat poorly drained, with a median seasonal high water table 6 inches down.
People do, constantly, but almost nothing here screens clean. The realistic approach is to price the elevation requirement, the fill and a wetland delineation into the offer rather than searching for a lot that avoids them.
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