Is It Worth Filing a Claim if a Winter Storm Damages Your Home?

Bend, OR Real Estate Podcast with Christine Browning

If your house has recently incurred some winter weather damage, here’s how you should proceed regarding your homeowners insurance.

As you know, we’ve experienced record-breaking snowstorms in central Oregon these last couple weeks that have caused significant damage to more than a few homes out there. As a result, we’ve been getting a lot of questions from people about their homeowners insurance and how it applies to this damage.

With this in mind, today we’ve brought in Allison Glasier from Country Financial to talk a little bit about homeowners insurance claims after big storms. Does homeowners insurance cover snow and ice damage? Is it worth filing a claim?

According to Allison, it’s important to be proactive to nullify any damage your home might’ve incurred. If you’re able to carefully and safely remove any snow or ice buildup or have a professional do so, that will help. That’s an important trait in the eyes of insurance companies.

Always be proactive when dealing with winter weather damage.

As to whether it’s worth filing a claim for leakage coming in from the roof or an ice dam buildup, if the damage is above the standard $1,000 deductible that most homeowners have, it’s definitely worth filing a claim.

If you have water that’s coming into your home or into the walls, have an adjustor look at it. The worst thing you can do is ignore it and let it fester until you have a mold problem. When we do a home inspection, there’s a lot of water damage that shows up that you can’t see just walking through the home. Having mold build up can make people ill. Even if you file a claim and someone does an analysis on it and you still end up paying the damage, it doesn’t go on your insurance record.

If you want more information regarding homeowners insurance claims, you can call Allison at [phone] or send an email to [e-mail]. If you would like to know more about insuring your home, click here.

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