For owners of homes that were substantially damaged and are in the most flood-prone areas, the buyout program will pay 100 percent of their prestorm market value. Homeowners in high-risk areas will receive a bonus to encourage them to move.

Some details about the buyout program remain to be ironed out; for owners of homes in other low-lying areas, the New York State rebuilding plan approved by the federal government describes a scaled-down program, offering the market value of the property after the storm. But a spokesman for Mr. Cuomo, Matt Wing, said state officials were still in discussions with the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and the officials were confident that federal money could be used so that all eligible homeowners would receive the prestorm market value of their home.

Buyout payments will be capped at $729,750 for single-family homes.

State officials project they could eventually spend as much as $400 million on home buyouts. Some of the land will be kept as open space, or turned into natural buffers like dunes and wetlands; other properties will be redeveloped, but any structures built there will have to be constructed to withstand flooding and storms.

The Staten Island borough president, James P. Molinaro, said his office had received calls from scores of homeowners seeking information on buyouts. He estimated that more than 600 properties could be sold to the government, including many in Oakwood Beach, on the eastern shore of Staten Island, and some in Midland Beach and Tottenville.

“Some people have said, ‘We’ve had floods in the last 10 years maybe three or four times,’ ” Mr. Molinaro said. “They say: ‘We want to get out of here. We’re afraid.’ ”

On several streets in Oakwood Beach, 170 of 184 homeowners have signed up for buyouts. Nearly all of them have already submitted buyout applications to the state, and appraisals were completed on most homes this week, said Joseph Tirone Jr., the leader of the Oakwood Beach Buyout Committee, a group that has spearheaded the relocation push.

Mr. Tirone is planning a meeting for early next month at which real estate agents and mortgage bankers will help residents begin to look for homes to which they can relocate.

Also on Friday, New York City’s commissioner of homeless services, Seth Diamond, said that about 1,000 people displaced by the storm remained in hotels. Speaking at a City Council hearing, Mr. Diamond said 600 of the evacuees could stay in the hotels through the end of May because they were about to move into permanent housing; others with no “housing transition plan” must leave the hotels by the long-stated deadline of Tuesday.