Homeowners insurance

MtnMan

Diamond Member
Jul 27, 2004
8,943
8,153
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The short lead up to my question
  • Have had homeowners insurance for over 50 years, first claim ever this year.
  • Tree fell on house, roof, eaves, gutters, awning damaged.
  • Ins. co sent company to remove tree and tarp roof the next day
  • Inspector came a week later and spent 2 hours inspecting, measuring, taking pics.
  • Next day I was notified a check was on the way for entire roof (2900 sq/ft), and repairs to gutter and eaves damaged by tree. Roof was 25+ years old.
  • Hired roofing contractor and had additional work done, replace all gutters, repair facia/soffits from water damage not related to tree.
  • Contract was for about $1500 more than just damage repair, but it was worth it. A crew of 6 men worked for 4 full days to complete everything.

Now to my question, the adjuster from the insurance company called me and said she needed a letter/email from the contractor that the work had been done, and some pictures of the work so they could send me a check for "recoverable depreciation". Well that was simple enough, got an email from the contractor, took a few pics and emailed them to the adjuster. Within 20 minutes I got a return email that a check for almost $3K was being sent to me.

Bottom line, even with $1K deductible, and about $1,500 in additional work I had done, I came out on the plus side by almost $1K

I have downloaded my policy in PDF format, and doing a word search the words 'recoverable' nor 'depreciation' do not appear. I called that agent I use, and they never really made it clear as to what 'recoverable depreciation' is, and why they pay it.

Worked out a lot better than I was expecting, no hassle or haggling and I'm ahead.
 
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Scarpozzi

Lifer
Jun 13, 2000
26,389
1,778
126
I've most recently heard insurance companies balking at roof replacement lately because of all the seemingly freak wind storms hitting the US and this may be part of that language. In those cases, they claim a 10 year old roof only has 8-10 usable years on it, so they prorate the room replacement for a fraction of the cost. In your case, the repair cost sounds as though wasn't unreasonable for them to cover with your deductible, so they wrote it off.
 

Genx87

Lifer
Apr 8, 2002
41,091
513
126
My first house, we had hail damage 2 of the first 3 years in the home. Your process was similar to mine. Very simple. Is your insurance company Amica by chance?