Parts of it, and the parts matter far more than the town average. Most of Paignton sits well clear of any modelled water. A narrow band along the seafront and the harbour does not. Rainwater flooding is missing from the headline maps entirely. This is an address question wearing a town question's clothes.
On the Environment Agency's river-and-sea flood zones, about 3% of the area's postcodes fall inside zone three, the highest-probability band, and about 2% inside zone two. Zone two is the additional medium-probability fringe lying beyond zone three rather than a larger ring containing it, so the smaller figure is not a misprint. The two bands are exclusive, and adding them together is the mistake most people make when they first open the map.
Those zones cover rivers and the sea and nothing else. Surface water flooding, which is what happens when a downpour arrives faster than the drains can clear it, sits outside them completely. That is why a house can be nowhere near a flood zone and still take water through the back door after a summer storm. The measure that folds surface water in comes further down this answer, and it is a bigger number than the zones alone.
Run the same mapping forward with the Environment Agency's climate allowance applied and the zone share rises to around 8% of postcodes. That is the existing model with more water in it rather than a forecast for any particular year.
Practically, this changes the insurance conversation rather than ending it. A property inside a flood zone, or carrying a high recorded risk, can attract higher premiums, larger excesses, and questions a fast online quote never thinks to ask. Get an indicative quote on the specific address before instructing a solicitor, not after the survey comes back.
Widen out to the combined postcode indicators, which fold surface water in alongside rivers and sea, and about 10% of the area's postcodes rate high on at least one measure, about 10% medium, and about 22% low. These bands overlap with the flood-zone shares above rather than adding to them. A postcode can appear in both, and frequently does.
Counted as homes rather than postcodes, the Environment Agency's rivers-and-sea mapping lists 3,679 properties across the postcodes that carry any risk at all, and only postcodes with some risk appear on that list in the first place. Of those properties, 608 are at high risk, 130 medium, 643 low and 419 very low. 410 of the high-risk properties are residential. That is the figure worth holding onto, because a percentage of postcodes is abstract and four hundred and ten houses is a neighbourhood.
Whether anything stands between the water and the building is the question the maps rarely put plainly. About 3% of postcodes sit inside a modelled high-risk extent with no defence present in the model, and about 3% inside one where a defence is present. Present in the model means a structure exists in the modelling. It does not mean the house behind it is safe. Defences are built to a design standard, and water arriving above that standard goes over the top of them. A further 4% sit inside a low-risk undefended extent.
The coast is close. About 21% of the area's postcodes sit within 500 metres of the shoreline, which is a threshold the mapping defines rather than a claim about any particular street. The nearest postcode to the water sits about 12 metres from it. Across the area as a whole, the median distance to the coast is roughly 1,080 metres.
Every postcode here falls under a shoreline management plan, and the stated policy across the twenty, fifty and hundred year horizons is hold the line, meaning the intention is to maintain defences along the existing shoreline. That is an intention recorded by the authorities responsible, not a defence that already exists and not a commitment of money. Policies have been revised before.
At Devonport, the nearest tide gauge with a long record, sea level rose by about 2.35 millimetres a year across the record running from 1962 to 2015. That is a measured historic rate over that period rather than a projection of what comes next.
Flood risk in Paignton lands in the middle, and the middle hides a sharp internal split. The town-wide picture is unremarkable, the seafront and harbour addresses are anything but, and the only version of this answer that helps you is the one you run on the exact address before you offer on it.