Protect Your Home and Wallet: Understanding Roof Insurance Claims
Will my homeowner's insurance policy pay to replace the roof on my house? Mike Goodman here, agency, principal Goodman insurance solutions. And today, I want to talk specifically about the roof, and what types of coverages that you might have. This is a question that we get quite a bit. And, you know, in terms of coverages, a lot of times what we see daily is that person will have either replacement cost coverage on our policy, or they might have actual cash value coverage on their policy, I want to talk about these two, two different coverages because they are distinctly different, they both have their advantages. And then I do want to talk about some disadvantages of one of those, okay, so if you have an insurance policy, and you have a roof on your house that is relatively new, most likely, you've got replacement cost coverage, what your replacement cost coverage is going to do is that if you have a claim, and the adjuster comes out and deems it necessary to repair your property, then what's going to happen is that the coverage is going to respond in a way that's going to replace what you have with new materials.
Now, if you have a roof that either is not in great condition, or B has some age to it, a lot of times when I say age, something that is more than 20 years, all right, in terms of age, and you probably have what's called actual cash value on your coverage on your policy, I should say. And so the way that's going to work in a claim scenario is that they will take the cost to replace your roof, and then they're going to subtract the depreciation from that, and then that's going to be your settlement. And so, you know, a simple way to look at this is if you, you do have like a 30-year shingle, okay, so the manufacturer expects that shingle to last, at least up to 30 years, and you currently you're at your 20, okay, so theoretically, you've got 10 years worth of life left on that. In the actual cash value settlement, they're going to apply that depreciation that will be subtracted from the cost to replace, and that will be your settlement. The actual cash value is not the end of the world, especially on something new, you know, just say that we put a roof on today, and we've got actual cash value coverage, it's not the end of the world, it's only been one day, between yesterday and today. And so obviously not going to be a whole lot of depreciation, where we can kind of get into a little bit of trouble is that if we have a roof that has, you know, its life has kind of done, alright, then you get into a situation where there's not a whole lot that's going to probably be paid out in that scenario. So just wanted to kind of go over those things, I get that question a lot, as far as how coverage is going to work. As boring as the insurance paperwork is, I'm sure for most of you might be a good thing to look at some time. You know, if you pull out your declaration page, you should be able to find that coverage. You know, on your policy, and a lot of times I'll see folks for their insurance policy, they might have replacement cost on the house. But when you get to the part where it talks about the roof, specifically, it might say Actual Cash Value, depending on its age of it.