hi this is jeremy goodrich owner ofshine insurance agency and creator of make insurance simple where we're tryingto change the way you feel about insurance by helping you to understandit whether you purchase your insurance policy from us or not. this video is allabout home owners claims so whether you'reexperiencing one right now or you just want to be prepared for if one happensi'm gonna walk you through the important part of what you can do to make yourhome owners claim as simple as possible. so let's dig right in! what we're gonna learn this video is prettysimple. we're gonna start with property
versus liability, two different kinds ofcoverage that exist on your homeowners policy. then we'll talk about what to do rightwhen a claim happens. your first decisions, the first things to do. we'll talk about a super importantperson in the process> the claim adjuster, and finally we'll walk through how aclaim goes and you can see the different parts of it and who does what, thosekinds of things. first off though, a tiny disclaimer. this video is meant toprovide very general advice. i am in no way confirming details about yourspecific insurance policies cause i don't have them in front of me. thoseconversations should happen between you
and your insurance advisor. so prettyobvious but just wanted to throw that out right at the beginning. ok let's talk first about propertyversus liability, some basic insurance education here. property coverage iswhen bad things happen to your stuff. in a homeowner scenario that's your house,your stuff inside your house, your other structures (your shed, your detached garage,pool, any of those kinds of things. that is your stuff and that is propertycoverage. liability coverage is when bad things happen to other people because ofyou. so something bad happened to somebody,
they got hurt or whatever. that is yourliability and that's why you have liability coverage on your auto policy,in your homeowners policy and, if you're a business owner, you have generalliability coverage as well. this is coverage for when bad things happento other people because of you. so i wanna stop right now and i justwant to say, if you want to learn about liability claims please check out thehomeowner's liability claims video on our youtube channel. you can clickright here to go watch that video right now. i didn't want to make this video too longand so the rest of this video is all about property coverage, coverage for badthings that happened to your stuff but i
do have a video about liability coverage,bad things to happen to other people because of you and you can watch thatright there. alright...so you had a claim happen. maybe you had a fire. maybe a tornadocame through. maybe you had water damage, a burst pipe for example. those are the most common ones butthere's lots of different kinds of claims. something bad has happened toyour house. what's the first thing to do? well, i'm gonna start with the no-brainer,you know, call 911. if your house is on fire or something like that it's not thetime to worry about your insurance coverage. right now you want to makesure that you mitigate the damage and that you get the professionals in to takecare of it. so you're gonna call 911 and
that's the first thing your gonna do. ifit is safe, stop further damage. the best example of this is you shouldknow where your water shutoff valve is in your house. oftentimes water claims become much muchworse because someone didn't know how to to turn off the water in their house and soit continued to pour out of the burst pipe and caused lots lots moredamage. so if it's safe go ahead and stop further damage. thatcould be turning off the main water pipe in a fire situation, that could begetting your fire extinguisher and attempting to put the fire out. ok, socall 911 at the very beginning,
obviously, and then if it's safe go ahead and stop further damage withall those things i just said. finally, make sure you document everything. sotake pictures, take videos, make sure to have evidence of what happened because the claim adjuster that i'm about to talk about is going to askfor evidence and the more you have, the better off you're gonna be throughoutthe claims process. ok so now you're gonna call a remediation specialist.this is someone who is going to clean up the damage. a fire and water damage servicespecialist you probably have one in your town if you don't you have one in thenext closest larger town and you're
gonna hire these folks to clean up themess. but i want to point out right now a rookie mistake. something that people doall the time and it totally makes the process so much worse. that is hiringthe wrong restoration service. these folks not only come in and clean up yourhouse but oftentimes they are going to become the general contractor who helpsto rebuild your house as well or fix the damage that happened. so you'regonna have a relationship oftentimes with these restoration folks from thevery beginning to the very end of your claim experience. they're gonna bedoing the work and so if you hire the wrong folks it really really creates aproblem. what i suggest is to ask your
insurance agent who they have usedbefore. insurance agents have relationships with restoration folks andthey know who's good and who's not. if you don't have an insurance agent go outto yelp, go out to whatever reference spaces out on the web and makesure that the people you hire get positive reviews from other local folksin your area. if somebody showed up and knocked on your door and you've never heardof them before or they don't have any reviews online, that's a red flag and they create could create a serious problem for your process. so definitely hire theright restoration folks based on referrals. ok so when everything issettled and you know it's not an
emergency anymore, it's time to call yourinsurance company. that's your insurance agent or maybe that's your insurancecompany itself. you're gonna make a phone call to them and tell them aboutthe claim. pretty simple right and when you call in you'll likely get ageneral person, someone who doesn't necessarily have expertise in the claimsprocess. they may not be able to answer a whole bunch of questions for you butthey'll be collecting information from you. the information you want back fromthem is is fairly simple. you want a claim number, this is going to drive alot of the future conversations you have about this claim.
you would love to have an adjuster'scontact information. this is a person so they would say "betty sue" and they give you her phone number. a lot of times they will not havean adjusters contact information yet in that first call. but you can ask for itand see if they have it and if they do that's super awesome. then ask when you canexpect a call from the adjuster. i always say in claimsexperiences you want to know when the company is supposed to do the next thing.then if they don't do it at the time they say they were going to do it, thatis when you contact them and say, "hey you said you would do you know so and so atthis time it hasn't been done yet. i was
just wondering how things are going." thatway you don't come off as being really needy or any of that but the same timeyou make sure that you're being taken care of like you should. so this isthe first opportunity to do this: asking when you can expect a call from the adjuster.if they say in the next 24 hours don't call the company two hours fromnow and say, "hey i haven't got a call from the adjuster. what's going on?" givethem the time that they said it would take but don't give them more. if that phone call doesn't come in the 24 hours that they saythey're going to call in, that's the time to give them a call and say, "hey ineed to speak with the claims adjuster."
speaking of the claims adjuster, here isour claims adjuster. this individual is your new best friend. the reason whyis this is the company's representative that makes claim decisions. decisionslike whether certain things are covered. how much coverage there is. so this person is super important and a super important relationship to takecare of. that's why i say be nice to this person. it is amazing to me how manypeople are unkind to their claims adjusters. the claims adjuster fromthe company calls me and says, "hey jeremy you know this person is is really beinga jerk and i'm trying to help him out but here's the situation......
and i gotta tell you, life is like this, imean this is a general life lesson. you're never going to get the best fromsomeone if you're treating them poorly. so you know be nice to this person. theyhave they have a huge role in the process. ok this next slide that i'm gonna throw up hereis one of the most important pieces of this video. this is what creates a visual for you that really explains exactly how a claim happens.so you have a claim happen. i've got the house with fire as the example here.there are two parallel paths that happened throughout the process. thefirst involves the insurance company
your insurance company is obviouslygoing to be involved if there's damage to your house but the other one youdon't think about as much is the contractors. i mentioned the remediationfolks at the beginning of this video and they may become your general contractorthroughout the process or maybe you have someone you know who does framing ordoes dry wall or does different kinds of plumbing or whatever. if youhave those folks you are usually, with most companies, allowed to hire whomeveryou want. but most of the time the remediation folks play that role becauseit's easier and it works out better. so there are two parallel paths the insurancecompany and the contractor. let's start with the
contractors first. what is their job? well,their job is to do the work. so they are going to clean out the damage, fixeverything that was wrong, and then rebuild whether that is puttingcarpet back down because it got wet or framing a room and drywalling it becauseit burned or whatever. it is the contractors that are local t0 you aregoing to be doing the actual work. it's super important to understand becausemost people think it's the insurance companies. they say, "hey why isn't theinsurance company getting this done?" it's because the contractors are the one thatare actually doing the work and the contractors are oftentimes what getshung up if problems happen in
the homeowners insurance situation it's often the contractor who are the ones that are taking the longest.because you know they have the work to do and they have to get the materials andthe people and all that kind of stuff. the insurance company is also involvedbut their role is fairly simple, they provide the money to fix the damage that happened.that's really they're only role. you know they're going to provide themoney and the contractors are going to do the work. the contractors are going to be theones you're talking with the most, what color you want the paint, you know, allthose kinds of things, the insurance
company is going to provide the money. twoparallel paths are super important to understand. ok so what are the some ofthe things that we need to think about while the property claimis happening? wellthe first and most important is to determine if there is coverage. the second is that, if there is coverage on thepolicy, the insurance company's going to pay to make you whole again. lets talk about determining if there is coverage. here's how it's going to work. the adjuster will likely visit your home and take photos. sometimes they don'tcome out but oftentimes they do. they're going to come out and take a look atwhat happened. they'll asking a lot of
questions. they'll ask you how it happened, whenit happened, what started it, all those kinds of things. finally they are goingto create a report that defines the cause of loss. the cause of loss is whatdrives insurance policies. what made the claim happen? what was the root problem? if a tree fell what made the tree fall. did someone with a chainsaw cut that tree down? that's very different than if a wind storm camethrough and knocked that tree down. so we're looking all the way back to the verybeginning even if it's a domino effect of things that happened. what was theoriginal thing that happened? that's called the cause of loss. why is thecause of loss so important? well when you
look at the cause of loss plus the termsof your insurance policy (which is different for all homeowners policies)you are going to get whether your loss is covered or not covered and that's theheart of it all. whether it's covered or not covered haseverything to do with the cause of loss plus the terms of your insurance policy.so many times the terms of your insurance policy is just all these legalese stuff inside of your insurance policy. sothat's where some trust happens when you hire your insurance agent and choose a homeowner's policy. you'retrusting them that it's a solid policy
and you're certainly gonna find out inthese kinds of scenarios. the cause of loss plus policy terms equalscovered or not covered. let's talk about how we figure outcovered or not covered. there's basically three different things that could happen.here. the adjuster could conclude that the entire loss is covered. that's thebest-case scenario, the entire loss is covered. they could concludethat parts of the loss are covered. the best example here is if a valve breaks in yourhouse and that valve was rusted out or something like that and the waterbursts everywhere. a lot of times they say well you knowwell the valve was old and faulty so we're
not going to replace the valve but wewill replace all the damage that the water did after leaving the valve. so ifit's a $10,000 claim they're gonna pay $9,000 and not paid the...wait that's a bad example but you know, sometimes they they won't cover certain parts of the lossbecause of the scenario and they will cover others. then, finally, the loss is deemed not covered. they determined that the cause of loss combined with thepolicy terms showed that the lost was not covered. so three different ways thatthings can go. oftentimes it's the entire loss, sometimes parts are covered & partaren't and other times it's not covered it all.
ok so how does the coverage work? wellfirst of all you have a deductible. you chose a deductible. oftentimes onhomeowners' policies i suggest a one thousand dollar deductible. that's to keep yourpremium down. some people have $2,500, $5,000 deductible and other people have$500 deductibles. to me $1,000 deductible is proper most of the time. so you are going to pay thefirst thousand dollars associated with this claim. so if the claim is lessthan $1,000 or if the damage is less than $1,000 then there won't be a claimbecause you won't you won't have gotten to your deductible limit. if it is abovethat then you'll pay the thousand bucks the insurance company will pay the rest.
replacement cost versus acv. there are lots ofvideos out there about this. i've created a couple so i'm not going into big detailson this topic but basically you want a replacement cost policy. this is going toreplace things properly. acv is going to subtract for depreciation so for everythingthat needs to be replaced the insurance company is not going to be giving youthe complete amount of money that you need to replace that. so hopefully youhave a replacement cost policy and not an acv policy. if you want to know moreinformation about that check out the other videos on our channel. finallyas i mentioned before, pay to make you whole. the insurance company is going topay to replace the things that you lost.
if that means rebuilding your housecompletely then we're going to rebuild your house completely up to the policylimits. if you have a policy that insures you for $180,000 and it's gonna cost250,000 to replace your house lots of insurancepolicies stopped at $180,000 you're going to have to pay the extra $72k to get your house totally completely rebuilt. now many many solid policieshave built-in systems to help deal with that, for example guaranteed replacement cost orextended replacement cost. but as best we can, we're going to pay to makeyou whole up to the policy's limits. we're not gonna pay more then your policyprovided for you, we're
gonna pay to make you whole. ok, so whatthings are covered? just a quick reminder your house is covered, your stuff iscovered, the things inside your house (with some limitations including jewelry,furs, firearms, money) personal property has lots of rules around it but ingeneral your stuff is covered, other structures (this could be a pool ordetached garage things of that nature) and finally oftentimes people does thinkabout this but we're gonna pay to put you in a hotel for a period of time or along-term living situation if we're completely rebuilding your house. soadditional living expenses or loss of use is paid by your insurance policyoften times as well. so those four things
are what are going to be covered in aproperty claim. that was quick, didn't get too deepinto into the details but gave you at least a basic understanding. we coveredproperty versus liability. property coverages for your stuff. liabilitycoverage is for bad things that happen to other people because of you. we talked about what to do first , make sure you call 911, stop the problem if you can, and finally document, document, document.the adjuster is your best friend in this process, the person who will be makingdecisions at the insurance company about whether coverage is there or not there,what kinds of coverage exists, how
payments get made, they cut the checks,this person is important. so be nice to them. and how a claim goes down. idescribed different coverages and how you can see them, reminded you about yourdeductible and talked a little bit about what things are covered. want to tell you real quickly aboutother sign videos: aour new home buyers guide, if you are buying a new home it's asuper super valuable video, very similar to this one in the way it's structuredbut really tells you a lot about the new homebuyers process. i definitelysuggest that video. if you've never heard of a personal liability umbrella,additional liability coverage above and
beyond liability coverage on yourhome and auto policy, this video will really help you with that. finally ifyou're into some funny stuff, our riding lawn more fails video is prettyfunny. some people making pretty poor decisions with riding lawnmowers.finally, what's next? as always the last step in our videos is to please, if youhaven't done so already, subscribe to our youtube channel. we create tons of greatvideos just like this one. our attempt is truly to help you understand howinsurance works or like with the new home buyers guide just to really educateyou about something financial or with the the lawn mowerriding lawn mower or fails just to try
and be funny and have a good time. so wetry and enjoy ourself on our channel here and we'd love for you to be a partof it. finally, if you could share this information with your social media world. whether that means tweeting a link to this video or liking our facebook page, anything that you can do to share thisinformation i always say good information is only great when you share it with others.if you feel like this video did that for you please go ahead and share it withother folks so that they can experiences it as well. i hope you gota whole bunch of information out of this video. ihope i didn't move too quickly. if youhave questions please throw them down in
the comments section i answer everyquestion that i see on there and i'm happy to answer yours. if you thoughtthis video is the worst thing you've ever seen in your whole life i hope you'llput that down in the comments section as well along with sharing why you thoughtit was that way so that i can make the next one even better. ok until the next time, have a wonderfulday
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