When you buy a home in Central Missouri, you’ll also be required to purchase an insurance policy to protect you and the mortgage company from financial loss in the aftermath of a flood, storm, fire, hail, vandalism, or other damages. If any of these disasters occur, your home could be severely damaged so you need to carefully pick and examine your policy to check what is covered and what is not. The best thing you can do at this time is to hire a home restoration service to help you with the claim. 

This is where 911 Restoration comes in, a renowned insurance claims management and repairs company, whose job is to not only clean and repair your property after the unfortunate event but also gather evidence and fight to get the compensation amount you deserve to rebuild your home. 

Dealing with a disaster and the insurance company is a process. In this post, we’ll share an overview of the insurance claim process and the steps you can follow to find the middle ground with the insurance adjusters. 

Steps to Dealing with Your Insurance Company After a Disaster

• Emergency Response

In the event of a fire or flood, the first thing you need to do is ensure the safety of all occupants. To do this, you should call the fire department and 911 for medical assistance and police reports. In case of a pipe burst, you should turn off the water from the main supply. If you can’t safely escape your home in a flood, you should head to the top floor or roof. It’s only natural that many homeowners look to protect their possessions, but responding to all emergencies should be the utmost priority. 

• Damage Assessment

Once everyone is safe, it’s time to assess the situation while taking safety measures. For homeowners, this is simply about getting a general idea of what happened and the severity of the damage. The home restoration and the insurance company will do assessments of their own later on. Proactively learning the causes can help homeowners better communicate about the incident. You can do this by taking photographs that could play a huge part in getting your claim money. However, you shouldn’t commence cleanup until professionals have gathered and documented all evidence of the incident. 

• Call a Home Restoration Service

Homeowners typically call their insurance companies following a fire, flood, or disaster without documenting the proper evidence. Not documenting can not only hurt their claim but also get it denied. Therefore, once you’re done assessing the damage, you need to hire home restoration professionals to help find a middle ground between you and the insurance adjusters. Some insurance policies have high deductibles, and if the damage is under that amount, the company can deny your claim. Hiring professionals for assessment also makes sense if you’ve filed for claims in the past. They can help prevent your rates from going up or fight to keep your policy. 

By letting professionals handle everything for you from negotiating and filing the claim to clean up and repairs, you can take the stress off of yourself in this difficult situation. If you go straight to your insurance company, you’re putting them in the driving seat, and if things don’t go well, you might be paying a huge chunk of the repair costs from your pocket. 

• Call Your Insurance Company

Once the restoration team has assessed the damage, you shouldn’t wait too long to call your insurance adjuster to reimburse you if you are displaced from your home. Remember, insurance companies are for-profit companies so the only way to find a middle ground is by leveraging all the evidence of the damage, especially if it makes your home temporarily unlivable due to a damaged bathroom or kitchen. Otherwise, the company might not cover lodging and living expenses. 

Inevitably, your insurance rates will go up once you file your claim, and companies will use this to reduce or deny payments. 911 Restoration will provide evidence, pricing,  and estimates of all damages to get you the highest reimbursement possible. If you stick to your insurance company’s recommended restoration service, chances are that they will consider the depreciation of all your items to reduce your reimbursement. For example, if your kitchen cabinets were old, they could take the reimbursement down from 100% to 75% or less since they’re working with the insurance company. 

• Restore or Rebuild

Following the assessment and negotiations, the insurance adjuster will investigate your claim and decide the reimbursement amount. They will check your policy for coverages and interview the homeowner and any witnesses. They can also look through medical and police reports to make or break your case. Once you have the insurance money, it’s time to return your home to its original condition or better. Most restoration services stop after emergency repairs and cleanup. However, 911 restoration goes all the way by providing everything you need from repainting to re-flooring, structural repairs, fencing, etc. 

Home Restoration Services – 911 Restoration of Central Missouri

At 911 Restoration of Central Missouri, we understand difficult an insurance claim process can be with the extensive amount of paperwork and information involved. Hence, our team of highly-trained and experienced restoration professionals are there by your side during the entire process to back up your claim. We also have the expertise and proper equipment to handle structural repairs for ceilings, roofs, floors, attics, basements, fences, windows, etc. 

If your home suffers damage from a disaster, call us right away for more information regarding our home restoration services and a quick assessment.