I am thinking of my friends who have lost their homes, and others that I don't know who have as well, and thought I would offer the following advice to those that have lost their homes from my experience losing my home to fire. Feel free to share with anyone you know that has lost their home.
Public adjusters will swarm you immediately. I would suggest that you don’t involve a public adjuster, at least at the outset. Once you engage a public adjuster, you lose the ability to speak to your insurance company directly. All communication goes through the public adjuster, which may or may not be to your benefit. Keep in mind that they will take ten percent of every dollar you receive. This comes out of your payout, and will limit your ability to rebuild and replace your items. If at some point you start to feel like you aren’t being well served by your insurance company, you can always engage a public adjuster later.
Secure a long term rental home as soon as possible. Many insurance companies have agencies that will assist you with this process. Be mindful of your loss of use coverage, as there is a monetary cap on this portion of your policy. Keep in mind how many years you will be out of your home, and if your policy cap is low, consider a more reasonable monthly rental expense to allow for the most flexibility to extend your time away from your home.
Insurance companies, no matter which one you have, will have what seem like unreasonable demands to rebuild your home, replace the contents of your home, and pay for your living expenses. However unreasonable they are, do your best to comply, and make friends with your adjuster as best as you can. They are your advocate to get as much funding from your insurance company as possible.
Start an inventory for your personal property claim. Begin by documenting items that were in your home as you remember them. Do your best to organize the list by room, as that is how your insurance company will organize it. Eventually replacement costs will need to be assigned to each item. This process can be emotional and challenging for most, so take your time to do it as you think of items, so you don’t become overwhelmed.
Cancel all of your utility services, and once you have a new address, file a mail forwarding request with the US Postal Service. Consider establishing a PO Box in case you have to relocate several times.
Expect a long process to rebuild your home, and the architects and engineers that you need to produce the plans needed to gain approval to rebuild will likely be very busy with the volume of work. I suggest reaching out and finding an architect as soon as possible to start drawing up your plans. They will all be very busy, and many will likely stop taking on new work as they won't have the capacity. The key to the whole process of getting back into your home is getting construction plans completed, submitted to the City or County and the Homeowners Association, and approved to start construction.
The initial estimate the insurance company will give you to rebuild your home will be low. The cost my insurance company initially gave me was half of what the ultimate cost to rebuild was. Don't get caught up in this at the start. It is a process. Select a contractor that is familiar with rebuilding after a fire, and working through the insurance company. This is key! If the contractor is not familiar with the demands of the insurance companies, you will likely miss out on tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars, and unnecessary delays due to their lack of experience on fire restoration jobs. Pick a contractor that has dealt with insurance losses before, and knows their ways and nuances.
If you are not familiar with the process of architect selection, plan completion, City and HOA approval, and the construction process, consider engaging someone who can help you with this process. Months can be lost, if you don’t have an experienced professional to guide you through the bureaucracy that is inherent in this process.
You will have to fight (nicely) with your insurance company to get as much money out of them as possible. You can't take their initial response as the final answer. It is a negotiation. You have to maintain diligence to justify why you deserve what you are asking for to replace everything you had at it’s replacement value.
Unfortunately, I would expect the process of getting back in your home to be several years. The City and County of LA will be very overwhelmed with building plan reviews, and plan reviews and inspections will take a long time, especially with the volume of work they will be burdened with. In addition, the debris cleanup and restoration of utility services will take years to complete.
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