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Hit By Tornado - Actual Cash Value Home Insurance - Does This Settlement Sound Right?
I'm in the midwest and my property was hit by a tornado earlier this year. I thought this thread may be relavent because of all the tornado victims down south and all over this year.
Anyway, I found out too late that my home has an "actual cash value" insurance policy - not a replacement cost policy. When I purchased the policy, the agent sold me actual cash value by describing that I wouldn't get full value for my possessions if I needed to file a claim. That was OK with me, so I went with the policy.
Fast forward to last month. I was hit by the tornado and received the adjuster's report. I was shocked. Everything is depreciated (with the exception of two basement windows were somehow not depreciated). For everything else, I was given 50 cents on the dollar for items like reinstalling subfloors and rebuilding walls and repairing exterior doors. Basically, the settlement came out to about half of what the repairs would actually cost. And many high dollar items (like the HVAC system that was blown away in the storm) were entirely omitted from the adjuster's report. Now I am stuck. The amount was so low, I can't afford to fix my home and can't live there.
I am wondering if I am getting ripped off by the insurance company. How can a subfloor be depreciated? Or an interior wall? Aren't these structural components necessary to live in a home? Why were the windows not depreciated and even included extra money for labor and profit yet no other repairs received the same treatment? Can an actual cash value policy mean that you are left with so little money to ever make your home habitable again?
This has been a terrible ordeal for me. I have been sick over it and my husband has been having chest pains and had to see the doctor. We can't live in our home and now won't have the money to fix it, yet we have a mortgage to pay. How can it be legal to sell an actual cash value policy for a home with a mortgage on it when the home may be damaged and the owner may not have enough money to make repairs? Shouldn't the bank have an interest in making sure the property is habitable again after a storm?
I plan to talk to my adjuster's supervisor, but before I do, I was hoping to get any advice from anyone who maybe has gone through this experience or has knowledge of a situation like this
Anyway, I found out too late that my home has an "actual cash value" insurance policy - not a replacement cost policy. When I purchased the policy, the agent sold me actual cash value by describing that I wouldn't get full value for my possessions if I needed to file a claim. That was OK with me, so I went with the policy.
Fast forward to last month. I was hit by the tornado and received the adjuster's report. I was shocked. Everything is depreciated (with the exception of two basement windows were somehow not depreciated). For everything else, I was given 50 cents on the dollar for items like reinstalling subfloors and rebuilding walls and repairing exterior doors. Basically, the settlement came out to about half of what the repairs would actually cost. And many high dollar items (like the HVAC system that was blown away in the storm) were entirely omitted from the adjuster's report. Now I am stuck. The amount was so low, I can't afford to fix my home and can't live there.
I am wondering if I am getting ripped off by the insurance company. How can a subfloor be depreciated? Or an interior wall? Aren't these structural components necessary to live in a home? Why were the windows not depreciated and even included extra money for labor and profit yet no other repairs received the same treatment? Can an actual cash value policy mean that you are left with so little money to ever make your home habitable again?
This has been a terrible ordeal for me. I have been sick over it and my husband has been having chest pains and had to see the doctor. We can't live in our home and now won't have the money to fix it, yet we have a mortgage to pay. How can it be legal to sell an actual cash value policy for a home with a mortgage on it when the home may be damaged and the owner may not have enough money to make repairs? Shouldn't the bank have an interest in making sure the property is habitable again after a storm?
I plan to talk to my adjuster's supervisor, but before I do, I was hoping to get any advice from anyone who maybe has gone through this experience or has knowledge of a situation like this
