Homeowner's and Renter's Insurance: Making Repairs and Your Homeowners Insurance Claim

When a disaster hits home, most homeowners and renters will instinctively want to take steps to prevent further damage to their home and possessions. However, it's important to understand how your homeowner's insurance policy or renter's insurance policy treats home repairs.

Temporary Repairs Versus Permanent Repairs

In general, insurance companies differentiate between emergency, temporary repairs (sometimes known as reasonable repairs), which are necessary to protect the home and your possessions from further damage, and permanent repairs to your house, apartment or condominium to make it livable.

Talk to Your Insurance Company

One of your first phone calls after a disaster strikes should be to your insurance agent or the insurance company's claim hotline. The agent or claims representative will ask you basic questions about the nature of the damage, will assign an insurance adjuster to your claim and let you know how soon the adjuster will visit your home to inspect the damage.

When speaking to the agent or representative, ask how you should handle temporary repairs to your home. These repairs, such as boarding up windows, covering holes in the roof and installing temporary fencing, are the type of repairs necessary to protect your home from additional damage and to prevent looting. Repairs of this nature are not intended to return your home to livable condition.

The insurance company may have a list of authorized repair companies (such as those that provide board-up services) for you to use. In some instances, these authorized companies may have a system in place to directly bill the insurance company for the cost of your emergency repairs.

Guidelines for Temporary Repairs

When possible, follow these guidelines when making temporary repairs:

• Use repair companies authorized by your insurance company
• Get written estimates from a couple repair companies to ensure that you're not over billed
• Document all damage, using photos and video, before making temporary repairs
• Keep all damaged or destroyed possessions and building materials until after the adjuster inspects your home
• Save your receipts
• If you don't know whether a repair would be considered temporary or permanent, check with your claims agent
• Don't make permanent repairs until you've reached a settlement with the insurance company

Questions for Your Attorney

If your insurance company resists paying for emergency, temporary repairs to your home, it may be necessary to have a lawyer help get you reimbursed for those costs.

Among the questions to ask your attorney:

• Do you have prior experience handling cases like mine?
• Can you estimate the cost of your services to resolve this problem?
• Can you prove that these were emergency repairs, and the costs were reasonable?

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