***Official 2023 Weather Thread***
- Thread starter wxman1
- Start date
My eyes are watering and my nose is burning outside and I'm in the "moderate" zone, can't imagine what it's like with poor quality.
Finally got my estimate from State Farm after the March 31 storm. Unsurprisingly, its way low (like $12k low from what the contractor estimated). Anyone have advice on getting insurance to actually pay the true replacement cost vs what they deem the replacement cost "should be"?
Beautiful day in CR. Took yesterday off to move our daughter home from 1st yr at Nebraska (**** off, money talks). Also have today and tomorrow off. Currently sitting on the back patio with a Busch Light and looking at the good forecast for the weekend.
Money talks did she get schollies for something? Always remind her the N stands for knowledge
Have your contractor contact State Farm to work with them on the estimate. Often, these storm recovery inspectors are from down south where they do not have any knowledge of our local codes like ice barrier, that everything visible from the street must match, etc. Our contractor actually insisted on being present when the inspector was there so he could inform the inspector of local codes and point out damage that is often "missed".
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Iowa is the only state with this law and it baffles me yearly that it hasn't been repealed as insurers bail on writing in the state while the state approves double digit rate increases.
Homeowner's rates are going to double in the next 5 years. Hold on.
About 6 years. Was replaced after a hail storm came through at that time. The contractor I'm using is the same that replaced it, so they have records of what shingles they used, etc.
This is interesting to note because there are a few things on the contractor estimate that aren't on insurance -such as Ice barrier. I already won one battle with them once because they only wanted to replace 1 slope of the roof and I told them they had to replace the whole thing per Iowa's Line of Sight law. Just have a feeling this is gonna be a long, drawn out battle. There's actually a couple of items on the insurance estimate that weren't included on the contractor estimate, so once those get added the discrepancy is going to be even larger.
Since the storm I've talked to a handful of other State Farm customers that all said they were a nightmare to deal with on homeowners stuff.
The derecho already took care of that for me. 2020 to 2021 increase was painful. Another ~12% increase from 2022-2023
A $13B underwriting loss last year will do that. The homeowner's insurance industry is a crisis right now and there's not really a way out of it.
Yep, scholarships. Don't worry, I remind her of what the N stands for.Money talks did she get schollies for something? Always remind her the N stands for knowledge
As I've said over and over...the contractor should to be with the inspector/adjustor when they were there. Our contractor insisted too but some here told me that was impossible even though I've done it twice.
All of the people that I've talked to had dropped State Farm already prior to last year's storms, but your point is valid.
Google Iowa line of sight insurance law. I didn't know about it prior to this storm either, but I was able to use it to leverage getting my entire roof replaced instead of just one slope.
I picked up that bit of knowledge from this thread, which is why I came back to ask if anybody had advice for battling over replacement values.
Thanks, just did that. This is the direct link, which is out of context and might not make sense without knowing where in the code it is.
However, this is language that explains it (from the search page itself):
What is the line of sight law in Iowa?
(Iowa has a line of sight regulation; 15.44(1) can be read below.) The key provision is the “reasonably uniform appearance within the same line of sight” term. So, if you stand at the corner of the house and can clearly see the siding does not match, the carrier must replace it.Apr 28, 2023
I've done this 3 times with different insurance carriers. State Farm inspector had no problem with having a contractor there, the Westbend inspector was not happy at all, but inspected with him there. The Westbend inspector "Missed" a bunch of damage, but the contractor made him take note and were added to the estimate.