(3 minute read time)
Considering most people will not need to file an insurance claim for hail damage to their roof very often throughout the course of owning a home it is natural to have a lot of questions about how the process works such as: what is the time limit to file a claim for hail damage in Texas? There are a few things to keep in mind in terms of how much time is granted by the insurance company to take action to resolve the issue.
Filing the Claim
Depending on your insurance policy, most of the time you will have a year long window to file a homeowners claim from the Date of Loss, but a few insurance companies will give you upwards of two years to file. This means that typically you have a year from the time of the hail storm hitting your property to call your insurance company to report the damages. The claim does not need to be resolved but you need to at least place the call within a year from the storm event.
Working the Claims Process
Once the claim is filed, the insurance company will get to work assessing the claim and determining what will be approved under your coverage. This process typically doesn’t take too long depending on if they put up a fight on approving your claim or not but in most cases it shouldn’t take longer than a week or two as long as the claim is valid and approved in a normal timely manner.
Conducting the Work and Collecting Depreciation
Once the claim is approved you will be given a check up front (which we call the ACV or Actual Cost Value check) and the rest will be held back as depreciation until the work is completed. Insurance companies do this to make sure that the work that they approve is done instead of writing homeowners a check and having them just pocket the money instead of having the work done and leaving the damaged items as they are.
As stated, you will have one year to have the work contracted and resolved in order to have the roofing company and other contractors conduct the work and file for depreciation to be released so you can get that final payment that they are holding back. In most cases this is plenty of time and your roofing company will have no problem getting things done in this time window as long as you don’t hire them at the 11th hour. While this time window is the typical time set, extensions can be granted if you communicate with your insurance company as to why you need it for extenuating circumstances such as health reasons, difficulty finding a contractor or other reasons. However, they won’t let it drag on for too much longer so it is a good idea to be proactive and have the work done in a timely manner to avoid running into a situation where the insurance company closes the claim.
Filing For Recoverable Depreciation
Once the work is completed, your roofing company will be able to file for the recoverable depreciation and get that last payment that your insurance company is holding back. They will need to file things like an invoice, certificate of completion and couple photos to the insurance company, showing that the work has been done. All of this will be handled by the company so there is not too much to worry about except wait for the check to come in!
Final Thoughts
At The Roofing Artist we have extensive experience handling roofing claims such as this in Austin, Texas. If you need help with something like this or any roofing situation at all, give us a call at 210-417-7728 or reach out by e-mail at theroofingartist@gmail.com and we’d be happy to assist you any way we can!
