If you have serious water damage in your home, you might be considering filing an insurance claim. Maybe a pipe broke and flooded the living room. You need to get the house repaired and make sure that it is safe for your family, along with the value you had in that home – after all, many people think of a home as an investment.
One important thing to keep in mind is that the water damage in the house may be much deeper and more serious than it appears at the surface level. If the settlement offer that you’re given from the insurance company doesn’t go far enough, you could be left with costs you have to cover on your own.
How could this happen?
This may happen simply because there can be hidden damage. In the example above, say that the living room flooded due to a broken pipe. You clearly need to replace the carpeting and the drywall, at least for the few inches at the bottom, where everything got soaked.
But a settlement to do that may only be for a few thousand dollars. What if the water leaked through and got into the subfloor, which also has to be torn out and replaced? What if there are questions about mold or mildew in the home, making it unsafe to live there?
Plus, as water moves through different materials, it can cause a lot of related issues. You may see the water damage in the drywall, but you could also have rot and decay in the studs or beams with the wall, for example. This could lead to structural safety issues that are much more severe than damage to drywall.
In other words, it’s very important to understand all of the costs that you’re facing when filing that insurance claim. You may need to know what legal steps you can take at this time.
