has anyone ever had a house fire? How does the insurance handle this?

Question

Does the insurance hand you a check for all your personal belongings??? Say you have your house insured for 190,000.00 and personal property for 110,000.00? I know they won't hand you the check for your house but what about your personal belongings?

Answer 1

i had a house fire in 1995; the entire house had smoke damage and was taken down to nothing in the inside; so we had the outside frame and no drywall, appliances etc;

a restoration company came in and removed everything; they took to a special place where they tried to get the smoke out; they were able to get maybe 10% of it saved;

the repairs, construction was done by a contractor inside; floors, carpeting, woodwook etc;

the applicances, furniture we bought and then submitted claim forms for reimbursement; depending on type of policy, if you have replacement cost, they will reimburse; but you have to replace with like kind; in other words, you cant buy a high end dishwasher when you only had a basic low cost one before, or they can deduct out the difference; now there are some things that change for the better and are cheaper;
ie; dvd player; if you bought one say 5 years ago, it might have cost $500; today you can buy for less than $100 with 2 to 3 times more options;

if you had 3 tvs, you are entited to 3 new tvs; but you got to remember, they have your stuff if not completely destroyed, so they know if you are trying to get more than you had before; if it was destroyed, you might have to verify thu photos that you had something to be entitled for the replacement; also, on couple of small bedroom tvs, they only gave us 10% replacement, stated they were over 10 years old, so we werent entitled to new replacement prices, but only acv (actual cash value)

as for clothing; i lost about 90% due to smoke damage; i had to try and remember how many suits, shirts, shoes etc i had; they probably only paid about 10% of the original value i paid; that hurt the most; other things to consider is food, may only give minimum for frozen and try and calculate how much food you have in your pantry or shelfs;

you also have a deductible on your policy that they will subtract out; it is doubtful you will have $110K in personal property, but more likely $20K to $50K;

hopefully you have a couple of good credit cards with no balance on them; the receipts will be needed to get a reimbursement check from the insurer; it also buys time to pay the bill, since most likely will take from 2 wks to a month for each claim you submit; by the time we were dont, we probably filled out about 50 pages listing items to be reimbursed;

by the time it was all done, i suppose we were out almost $5k for out of pocket expenses either not covered or reduced;

i am not sure if you had a fire allready or just wondering what would happend if you did;

if you did; before buying anything, check with your insurance adjuster for the procedures on submitting claims;

also; they did pay for 3 months for us to live in an apartment since our house was unlivable;

Answer 2

I hope you are planning for the possible loss in the future and not wondering if you will now get a check.

Take pictures of everything you have. Simply walk around the room and take a bunch of pictures. Some people recommend a video camera, but that is troublesome to make useful later (you will need to keep trying to pause the tape/image and it gets messy). If you take pictures, you can save them in classified directories (living room, bedroom, family room, etc) that will help you later if you have a claim.
For larger items, make sure you have specific pictures of that item and write down the serial numbers and model numbers.
If you have exceptionally valued items (art, high-end cameras, etc) contact your insurance agent about scheduling the items on your policy. Without scheduling them, you may have a lot of trouble getting payment for them. You may need to provide appraisals or at least copies of your receipts as proof.

Once you have all of this great documentation, make sure you store it somewhere other than your home. Your family, work, insurance agents file - whatever. Just keep a copy outside of your home.

Good luck (and don't let your kids play with matches)!

Answer 3

You don't just get the face value of the insurance, you'd have to itemize your personal property, showing the value for each item, and that's the amount you'd get up to the policy limits - and yes, you'd likely get a check for that itemized amount. Some policies cover replacement value, some just cover depreciated value, so you'd have to know which type of insurance you have. Your agent or more likely the adjustor should give you info on what you need to do, and should nelp you do it. They'll have forms to fill out for what you are claiming.

Good luck. A good agent and a good adjustor can really help you out.

Answer 4

Well, you're going to rebuild, right? So they should pay up to $190K to rebuild your house.

For the personal property, you have to submit an inventory to them. They issue you a check for actual cash value (which means, cost to replace less depreciation). If you have replacement cost coverage on your policy, you then go out and replace the items, and submit proof of replacement, and then they cut you a check for the difference.