Public Adjusters & Insurance Appraisers

A Catastrophic House Fire First 30 Days After A Fire

Public Adjusters Guide For First 30 Days After A Fire: Part II

Part II: Public Adjusters Guide For First 30 Days After A Fire

Let’s dive into more of the items that need your atten­tion in the first 30 days after a fire. While there are many impor­tant things that you need to be pay­ing atten­tion to, THE most impor­tant thing to do after meet­ing with the adjuster is to find some com­fort­able liv­ing arrange­ments for your fam­i­ly.

 

Temporary housing

Home­own­ers poli­cies all have cov­er­age for what is called Addi­tion­al Liv­ing Expens­es (“ALE”). This par­tic­u­lar ben­e­fit pro­vides monies to help fam­i­lies find suit­able hous­ing while their claim is get­ting set­tled and their homes rebuilt. The lan­guage with­in the pol­i­cy for this cov­er­age typ­i­cal­ly says that the insur­ance com­pa­ny “will pay any addi­tion­al mon­ey nec­es­sary for you to main­tain your nor­mal stan­dard of liv­ing”. So, if the house that you were liv­ing in was 2,000 square feet with 3 bed­rooms and 2 baths then you would be enti­tled to find a house com­pa­ra­ble in size and qual­i­ty as to what you were liv­ing in. This arrange­ment would meet the def­i­n­i­tion of “your nor­mal stan­dard of liv­ing”.

But, what­ev­er you do, don’t get per­suad­ed by the insur­ance com­pa­ny to go rent a 2‑bedroom apart­ment. If you do, you will soon “feel the walls clos­ing in” and regret hav­ing agreed to some­thing much small­er than you are used to. When fam­i­lies are forced to live in accom­mo­da­tions half the size of their pre­vi­ous liv­ing arrange­ments fam­i­ly dynam­ics can get very stress­ful and strain rela­tion­ships, mak­ing for a very unhap­py home­life. Find some place where you will feel com­fort­able for six months or more. Set­tling your claim and then restor­ing your home will take a lot longer than you can imag­ine. Trust me on this.

Homework assignment: Contents Inventory.

When you met with your adjuster no doubt, he gave you some “home­work” to do. He assigned you the task of list­ing all the items in your home that were lost in the fire and wish to make a claim for. This is a rather for­mi­da­ble task in the best of times, much less after dis­as­ter strikes. But, if you want to be giv­en mon­ey for all the items you lost in a fire or tor­na­do you are going to have to com­mit a sub­stan­tial amount of time to putting togeth­er a com­plete and detailed inven­to­ry. So, take lots of pho­tos of all the con­tents and do your best to cap­ture with­in the pho­to the name or brand of the item as this will help with pric­ing.

Remem­ber, you will only get paid for the items you list; so, if you decide to not list an item because the whole process is too time-con­sum­ing and emo­tion­al­ly drain­ing then just under­stand that the insur­ance com­pa­ny you will not give you the mon­ey to replace it out of the good­ness of their heart. It also means, that you will be com­ing out of your own pock­et when the time comes to replace any item not list­ed.

Sec­on­dar­i­ly, since 90% of the poli­cies I read pro­vide for Replace­ment Cost cov­er­age you will need to list the cost of replac­ing a giv­en item at TODAY’s price and not what you paid for (be it last year or ten years ago). Pay atten­tion to this or it will cost you mon­ey. Addi­tion­al­ly, don’t use as your Replace­ment Cost a “sales” price as that item most like­ly won’t be on sale at the time you move back into your home and start buy­ing and replac­ing all your dam­aged con­tents. Use nor­mal retail pric­ing.

One final note: if list­ing and pric­ing all of your con­tents just seems to be too great a bur­den at this time in your life, and it’s becom­ing appar­ent to you that you are delib­er­ate­ly leav­ing off such items as tooth brush­es and show­er cur­tains (as an exam­ple) in order to save time, you would be wise to get some pro­fes­sion­al help with your “home­work assign­ment”. You have hun­dreds and hun­dreds of items in your house that are under $20 and if you leave them off the inven­to­ry list you will only be hurt­ing your­self. (FYI: we have sev­er­al inven­to­ry spe­cial­ists on staff who do this for our clients and are experts at putting togeth­er a full and com­plete list of every­thing in a home, pric­ing those items and then fac­tor­ing in depre­ci­a­tion. They get rave reviews from our clients. Feel free to call us and let’s talk about it).

Let me end up Part II by admon­ish­ing you not to throw away any of the items in your home with­out writ­ten autho­riza­tion from the adjuster. One of the “con­di­tions” of you being able to have a pol­i­cy with any car­ri­er is that they have “the right to inspect all dam­aged items as often as they rea­son­ably require.” If you throw some­thing away before they have the chance to make their own dam­age assess­ment or deter­mine sal­vage val­ue, they could refuse to pay you any­thing for that item.

I’ll go into more detail in some future arti­cle about inven­to­ry­ing of per­son­al prop­er­ty. Until then if you should have any ques­tions, please feel free to call us and we’ll get you point­ed in the right direc­tion.

 

Call Us 888–215-0893

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