When damage happens to your home, you must go through your insurance company to get money for your losses and to fix what was broken. If you're like a lot of homeowners, your insurance company gave you a check that barely covers half of the work that needs to be done to get your home back in shape.
This happens for more than one reason. The first reason is that this is how the Insurance Industry works. Their goal is to make money. They also hire their own Insurance Adjusters to figure out how much damage your home has and how much it will cost to fix. Since the Insurance Adjuster in this case works for the insurance company, nobody is looking at the damage with your ideas in mind.
The second reason why insurance companies underpay property owners is that the average property owner doesn't know any better. They see the insurance company and their adjuster working, and when they come up with a payment number, it is taken for granted that this is how much they should be paid for the damage.
A fact that not many people know is that all homeowners can choose their own contractors and get more than one bid for home repairs. You don't have to choose the lowest of the estimates. If you get the lowest estimate, it could mean that the work will also be the worst. As a property owner, you can choose the contractor with the highest estimate if you want, and the insurance company has to follow your choice.
The problem with this choice is that most people who own property don't know how to do this. It can be boring, hard to handle, and just plain confusing. The good news is that you can hire an insurance adjuster who only works for you and looks out for your best interests. The name for this kind of Adjuster is "Public Adjuster." The job of a Public Adjuster is to work with and for the policy holder to get all of the money they are owed from the insurance company. A public adjuster takes care of property damage claims caused by fire, wind, water, flood, hurricane, theft, and many other things.
In many states, you can reopen a property damage claim up to five years after you first filed it. If you think your insurance company paid you too little on a claim in the past, a Certified Public Adjuster can help you get the rest of the money.
