Homeowners policies
A standard homeowners policy will cover fire damage to your home, but you want to make sure the policy limits are going to leave you whole. Many customers are dismayed at how little the insurance companies pay out, it’s not as simple as it cost $80,000 to build it so I’ll get $80,000 in insurance. You need to have enough to rebuild in today’s economy, demolish what’s left of the structure and do any upgrades in building codes.
Many insurance policies are based on the current market price of your home. Other insurance policies might base coverage on your home’s mortgage. Neither number will cover the true cost of clean-up and repair. A good general contractor should be able to help.
Coverage for Possessions/Renter’s Insurance
In the last year, only one customer had enough coverage for her contents. Out of her three bedroom home, there was less than a truck full of belongings that were salvageable. The customer was not just getting reimbursed for what she lost, she had to have a complete inventory with pictures to negotiate with the insurance company, from packages of Kleenex to Remington statues. The insured has to decide what she wanted salvaged, then those items are moved, cleaned and stored. A piano with sentimental value was cleaned even though cleaning it was more expensive than replacing it. Then insurance company pays for disposing of everything else. It’s not as simple as looking around and saying “if I lost everything, $25,000 would make me happy.
A renter who thought she had a good policy discovered that after the insurance company put her family up in a hotel for a week, paid for the inventory and disposal of everything that was destroyed, she owed $12,000. And nothing she owned was replaced.
Fire Damage Recovery can help you. Learn more at FireDamageRecovery.net or call us at 510-351-7510 to book an appointment now.
