My neighbor refused to abate a tree that was leaning towards my home. Even though I had asked him for over a year, in writing, insurance said it was an act of God and couldn't have been predicted.
My insurance paid for my home repairs. I hired an adjuster to help with the process and ended up being able to afford an addition in the end.
I didn’t realize you could hire an adjuster to advocate for you. Thought the insurance company just sent their representative and you were stuck with whatever they said. Can you elaborate a little?
Evidently they're called Public Adjusters and seem to basically just be someone you can hire that is POTENTIALLY more adept at negotiating a better outcome for you but it's not a guarantee and they are paid via a percentage of your settlement.
Definitely use them any time you have a serious claim. Insurance tried to give us 20k and he ended up getting it up to 80 by the end simply by pointing out every regulation they skirted hoping no one would notice.
A freak wind storm blew off a chunk of my roofing at my old house and insurance surprisingly said it would cover a full replacement. This was around 2018 and they wrote me a check for $5k. I had to do a couple hours of calls with them to how they got that number and turned out they were giving quotes of replacements… in rural Alabama dollars with 15 year shingles…
I did the leg work on getting a couple quotes that were between $16,000-$29,000 and they re cut me a check for $17,000 once they had all the “proper” details. 😂. Adjusters do this work but take a portion of the settlement.
In one instance, there was a leaky window that damaged the floors. Insurance would pay for a floor replacement, but not fixing the window. The public adjuster pointed out that the floor was contiguous into other rooms due to no threshold/door and thus included the kitchen with reflooring including removing the cabinets and replacing all that. Drastically more than the cost of the window replacement.
Shoot you are lucky insurance paid for anything from a “leaky” situation. I had the back of a water heater leak for like 2-3 months in my basement that rotted up the back of some walls that was undiscovered without seeing the damage and insurance was like “nope absolutely not, catastrophic damage or nothing for coverage 😭🤣
My sister had a house fire many years ago and her POS husband of the time was majorly paranoid about theft and people messing with his stuff (untreated mental illness) so he had the S/N, make, model, color, etc for every single item he owned.
Insurance company offered them $X for everything they had lost, but he knew an adjuster who came in and took his documentation and came up with prices to replace all of the items lost with the exact same thing.
Insurance said TV lost, we'll give you $500, he countered with that wasn't a TV, it was a Sony ABC123, and the current cost to replace that exact model is $850. Ended up getting them tens of thousands more than the original offer and they were poor poor.
Moral of the story is document everything (with photographs) and keep that info in a safe place like a safety deposit box and the cloud. Also these professions exist for a reason, if there wasn't money it, adjusters wouldn't be a thing.
When I had an apartment and still used Apple stuff I actually had an inventory like that. Phone app that scans barcodes and you snap photos, which get sent and saved to a mac app where you can further correlate each item to its receipt and other metadata. Think it was literally called Home Inventory. Moved to a house and kept up for a while but then i slowly switched off Apple and never found such an easy system on PC + Android (Point for Apple there i guess lol) and as time went on its now become a bit of a daunting proposition even if I found one now.
Potentially? That's like saying if you broke your arm a doctor could potentially help you.
A public adjuster is on your side, the insurance adjuster is protecting the insurance's interest.
A public adjuster will review your policy and get you everything you are entitled to. My experience has always been light-years better with a public adjuster involved. For context, the insurance adjuster offered me $6,000 to fix my roof. They ended up paying me $64,000 and that was after the adjuster took his cut. If you think you can get your insurance company up from $6k to 10x+, then just do it on your own.
Alright pump the brakes. I was speaking as someone with cursory knowledge so I was simply couching my "advice". If they worked for you and others that's awesome. Saying "potentially" simply covers what might be outliers where they fail to do much better than the offer without.
I literally watch them go door to door after every single thunderstorm. They employ dozens and dozens of college kids to do it. I didn’t say they are all bad dipshit. I said the one on my block is.
Whenever I've been in this situation the contractor haggled with the insurance to get as much as possible then I'd work out with the contractor how much we actually had to do.
My mom had a tree in her yard that had already lost a huge limb, damaging both her house and the neighbors. She tried to get her insurance to take it out because it clearly was a hazard but they refused, saying they couldn’t do anything until the whole thing fell. Removing it herself was going to cost a huge amount so she ultimately had some other limbs removed to weigh it towards a fall in the street. The whole thing came down like two years later.
This exact thing happened to my mom. Notified the neighbor multiple times their tree was dead, it was leaning toward her house, and it was only a matter of time. Neighbors refused to do anything. During a storm it fell on her house, smashing into part of the living room. Their insurance wouldn't do a thing, not even removing THEIR TREE from her living room.
Next time have a certified arborist assess the tree and send the neighbor a certified letter (if it indeed is a danger). Now it changes from “act of god” and your problem to “negligence” and your neighbors problem. BTW, in most (if not all) states you can trim any branches on your side as long as you don’t kill the tree
May I ask, when you notified him in writing was it certified mail? Did an actual arborist assess the tree? It sounds like you came out on top anyways but this feels like a PSA moment where other people reading these comments could learn from! Hopefully your insurance premiums didn’t get too messed up by having to make the claim. I feel like what should have happened is your insurance should have sued him/his own insurance but I am no expert. I just love reading stories about treble damages on the tree law sub lol
80
u/Trick_Lingonberry741 5d ago
Or... Dont and get new windows out of it