When disaster strikes your home like a flood, mold, water damage, or any other abnormal home damage, you need an advocate. An expert who can help navigate complicated fine print and get what is rightfully yours to restore your home to new. Florida Public Adjusting is an advocate with over 20 years combined experience, and a veteran core team made up of experts in the insurance world who share vast knowledge in policy language, construction, engineering, and damage consulting to get you what you deserve your claim.

When you file a claim for a natural disaster or other types of damage in your home, an insurance company is going to try and minimize and undervalue that claim to give you as small a payout as they can justify. A public adjuster will advocate for you with your insurance company and get you every single cent that you are entitled to.

These types of situations are so high stress and so difficult for many homeowners, and we want you to know that if you decide to hire a public adjuster you are getting someone who has seen it all, and who honestly wants to make sure you and your home are restored back to normal.

Public adjusters specialize in reading through the fine print on your insurance policy to identify how much your policy is for and how much you are entitled to when you make a claim on your house. One thing to focus on if you do decide to hire a public adjuster is to find out if they are working by themselves or if they have a full team to support them and ultimately you the customer. Those who have a team are better equipped to help you in the long run.  Most public adjusters work alone and as a result, handle every aspect of their business by themselves.  This doesn’t mean they don’t do a good job, but rather they just don’t have enough hours in the day to take care of everyone like they want.

Public adjusters are paid a fee from the insurance settlement. So, when you get your insurance claim funds they will take a percentage of the claim that you get.  The best part is you know a Public Adjuster is on your team because if you don’t get paid then they won’t get paid either.

You are probably wondering what percentage public adjusters are typically paid.  There are 2 answers to this.  If there is a state of emergency declared by the government (hurricane, major flooding, etc) then the fee is 10% but this is only in the first year after the date of loss, once the year passes the fee goes back to 20%.  All other times the fee is 20% of the total claim amount.  To reiterate though this is a fee that comes directly out of the settlement and as a client you are not required to pay anything out of pocket for their services.

One of our favorite stories is of a homeowner who had a sewage backup in their home(that’s not our favorite part).  The insurance company made the determination that they would get $12,000 for the claim.  The insurance company missed a few things in the policy though, and when we presented this information to them that payout became $180,000.

Of course, since we are public adjusters we are going to say yes.  However, one point we always like to make is our inspections are 100% free.  We will come out and advise you on whether you are able to make a claim or not for the specific damage that you have. And of course, hiring a public adjuster is great because we don’t get paid if you don’t get paid. Now, one caveat we will add if you’re deciding on hiring a public adjuster is if you do not have an active home insurance policy and sustain damage to your home there isn’t much we are able to do.

If you are looking to hire a public adjuster we recommend going straight to the internet.  We encourage you to look at reviews online so you can see how claims were handled for other customers in the past. If you feel like something is not right with your property or you aren’t sure if something is normal–give us a call!

Before you make any phone calls as soon as you see damage in your home, begin to document it.  That includes pictures, videos, invoices for any companies you hire. There is no such thing as too much documentation. After documenting you are ready to give us a call.

Once we receive a phone call from you we will schedule our initial inspection to verify the damage on your property and make sure that it’s something that we can help with.  We can be out to your property in as little as 2 hours after the first phone call. Again this inspection is completely free– so it will always be worthwhile to call us.

If it’s determined you have a claim then the adjuster will help you to file your claim with the insurance company. Once your claim is filed the insurance company will send us their adjuster’s information, we will then schedule to meet with them at your property. From the time your claim is filed the insurance company has 90 days to make a claim determination.

During this process, you will have lots of forms, lots of information you will need to provide. Insurance companies from day 1 will use every single word that you say against you.  This is why we recommend immediately calling us so you have someone supporting you through this process, and knows what the insurance company is trying to do.

All About Insurance Agents

Once you have filed your claim with the insurance company the next step is to have an insurance agent come to evaluate the damage to your property.  A lot of people want to know how long does it take an insurance agent to come out?  Normally it takes about 3 days for an insurance adjuster to contact you and set up a time to come out.  Then a lot of people want to know how long do insurance agents take once they come out to your property? Once they have come out to your property their inspection will take anywhere from 30 minutes to 2 and ½ hours to complete. Many want to know how to talk to an insurance agent.
Here are some tips for answering insurance claim agent’s questions:

Now that you know a little bit more about Public Adjusting and how it can help. If you find yourself in a position where you need a public adjuster– this means any damage to your home that you plan on filing an insurance claim. We encourage you to consider these 2 vital pieces: