Episode 7: How An Independent Insurance Adjuster Can Help When Dealing With a Home Disaster – Part 2

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In part 2 we continue our conversation with Matthew Goldstein, SPPA with the Greenspan Company/Adjusters International Matthew will share insights on how to evaluate your current coverage, negotiate the best settlement from your insurance company, and other ways he can help the homeowner through the rebuilding process. Get to know more about Matthew Goldstein, visit https://www.greenspanai.com/

Transcript

Episode 7: How An Independent Insurance Adjuster Can Help When Dealing With a Home Disaster – Part 2

Jana: Welcome back home builders and remodelers. This is the second half of our two-part series on hiring a public adjuster to negotiate your settlement after a major property loss. To catch up on the process of how to get started, please check out last week’s episode by going to www.fromdisastertodreamhome.com. Matt Goldstein, SPPA is my guest again today. He is a licensed public adjuster with the Greenspan Company Adjusters International. This week let’s start with the evaluation of your coverage. Most mere mortals really do not understand the terms and conditions of their insurance policies. The coverage limitations, the valuation methods, filing methods required, and the time limitations.

 This is job security for you, Matt. How many of your clients do you feel truly understand the coverages they carry?

Matthew Goldstein: Very few. I think unless you’re in the insurance industry or have gone through a claim before and know how to put together the proper policy, then very few, less than 10%.

Jana: And how do you understand the policy language?

Matthew Goldstein: I’ve been reading policies like I read the newspaper for the past 30 years. One of the misnomers is that every insurance policy is the same. Well, it’s not. Every one of them is different. Every carrier has little nuances to their policies and different coverages and different allocations of funds that you have to read every single policy every single time, and we do sort of a coverage analysis. We have a small form that we use just for internal purposes so we make sure we’ve covered all of the little extras that you would find in your policy.

Jana: That might be an interesting thing for consumers to have some kind of checklist to know what they’re looking for when they’re purchasing a policy.

Matthew Goldstein: Well, yeah, most homeowners, for example, they’re looking at their insurance for the building. They’re looking at their insurance for the cost to replace their contents plus possibly their living expenses as we discussed on the last episode. But there’s also smaller coverages for debris removal or code upgrades if your house isn’t up to code. There’s things that are built into a policy that people don’t necessarily know are there, and the insurance company isn’t always forthcoming with that knowledge because that saves them money if they don’t pay it out.

Jana: Yes, that is also job security for you. The first thing that you personally did after you visited our broken home was to gather all of our coverage documents and read them, something I didn’t have the bandwidth to do at the time. What does the process of evaluating the coverage include?

Matthew Goldstein: Reviewing the policy and outlining the building coverage, the contents’ coverage, the living expense coverage, looking into any additional coverages that are afforded in the policy. Some homeowners policies have a small extension for electronics or some have, if you have a home office, there’s a little piece of money set aside for your home office equipment, things like that. So we’ll go through and read the policy and outline what the coverages are based upon each individual claim so we know what we should be asking for and what we should be invoking and what doesn’t necessarily come into play from the policy.

Jana: So you’ve made it clear that every policy is written differently. and as a consumer it’s mind-boggling to know what we really are signing up for. Do you have any tips that we could use to understand our policies better?

Matthew Goldstein: I don’t know whether, for example, the California Department of Insurance on their website has a basic ‘How to read your insurance policy’ thing. There are tips out there. I believe our website does have a research library that people can utilize and it talks about policies and there’s articles that are written about homeowner policies and commercial policies and different situations and different disasters and how different claims are handled. So that’s always a resource that people can use.

Jana: I’ve come to understand, in the case of the recent fires in Southern California  that affected our clients, many people were underinsured to rebuild. How often do you find people are underinsured for the situations they find themselves in?

Matthew Goldstein: Unfortunately, more often than not, and again, I think it’s a situation of not necessarily knowing proper valuations, not knowing what you’re looking at, having an insurance policy that’s been in effect for a number of years and not reviewing your coverage or updating your coverage, things like that. I can remember one of the clients that I represented in Montecito had a homeowner claim, and they had the home insured for a certain amount of money. As a result of the Northern California, Napa fires that had happened just before the fires in Santa Barbara, the homeowner was smart enough to say, you know what? I don’t think I have enough coverage, and he called his broker and doubled his policy right then and there.

His house was then wiped out three months later by the mudslide so he was lucky that he had done that. Had he not done that, he wouldn’t have had enough insurance. There are times when people just don’t know. We have been successful in the past, especially in disasters where we’ll go back and take a look at the history of the clients insurance. If we find that the agent or the broker has never come out to the house or never offered more money or things like that, we can utilize that to increase the coverage right then and there. So if your home was destroyed and your broker hadn’t upped your limits in 10 years, it’s very easy to make an argument that the broker was negligent for not doing something. And so the million dollars you had on your house that should have been 2 million, we found ways to get that coverage instituted immediately.

Jana: So there is some responsibility for an ongoing revisiting of people’s policies from the broker’s perspective; it’s kind of considered their job to keep you up on what you need and how things change.

Matthew Goldstein: Sure, there are. The problem is in today’s quick internet sources, you buy an insurance policy through certain carriers, then it’s all done online, or it’s all done over the phone. When you talk to an 800 number, and it’s someone in some part of the world who’s taking your information and putting it into a computer, and that computer algorithm spits out a policy for you. So there’s no real human being that you’re in touch with. So most of the larger carriers, the direct writer companies, State Farm, Allstate, Farmers specifically, have their own agents, and those agents sell only their products and those agents should communicate with you on a regular basis and visit your property and see what improvements you’ve made or discuss your insurance coverages.

If you work with an insurance broker who takes your information and shops your insurance to a bunch of carriers to get you the best possible policy, again, it’s the broker’s responsibility every year or two to check in, “Hey, did you make any changes to your building? Is your business still the same? Do you still have X amount of dollars in inventory or has your business grown, and do you need to up your coverage?”

Jana: Yeah, that’s actually true; you bring up two important points there. I recently had a client that had an incident, and they had redone their kitchen six months before; they had just finished their kitchen. So of course, we had a full accounting of what had just been done in the upgrade. It’s really important for people to keep track of the changes they’ve made so that it’s the insurance company’s responsibility to help you because you’ve lost your kitchen… They’re not going to just repair your kitchen to the 1952 original. They’re going to have to bring it up to date to what it was when you lost it.

Matthew Goldstein: Correct.

Jana: So saving all those receipts and a record of what you do in addition to checking in with your insurance carrier, is a good idea. The other interesting thing about this is that the year we moved into our house, one of these giant eucalyptus trees fell on a house down the street, seriously injuring a woman. They were out of their house for at least a year, and I immediately called my insurance broker, and I said, “Listen, if a tree falls on my house, am I covered?” And I did increase my insurance. I didn’t plan on the tree falling on my house, but somehow I always knew it  could. 

If a person is underinsured, what will be expected of them in the rebuild?

Matthew Goldstein: It sort of depends upon why they’re underinsured. For  example, if you’ve got a million-dollar repair policy and your loss is $1.5 million, unfortunately, nine times out of 10, you’re going to be responsible for coming up with those additional funds. Your insurance company doesn’t necessarily owe you anything above and beyond the insurance you purchase.

Jana: How does the situation differ whether you have a mortgage holder or whether you’ve owned your property outright.

Matthew Goldstein: I don’t know that that necessarily comes into play. I find that most people who have a mortgage on their home have better insurance because you have to insure your mortgage. If you own a million-dollar home, that’s the cost of the home; it doesn’t necessarily cost that much to fix it or rebuild it. So a lot of times, mortgage companies will come in when you buy a house and say, “Oh, you only bought a half a million dollars of coverage. You don’t have enough insurance.” 

They’re interested in you insuring the mortgage, which you don’t necessarily need to do. The mortgage company can’t force you into a value.

 You need to consider, if this house were to have a fire, what would be the cost to repair? If it’s less then the value of the house, you can insure it for less, saving you a little bit of money. 

Jana: Can a homeowner decide to pay off their mortgage and sell the lot if they’re not able to rebuild?

Matthew Goldstein: The homeowner can do whatever they want with the funds. If there’s a mortgage company, then the mortgage company will usually take some control of the money because they want to make sure that you reestablish the value of the home. They’re holding a note on your home that is worth X amount of dollars, and if you were just to take the money and run and leave them with it, they’d foreclose on you, but they’d also be left with a home that has half a million dollars worth of damage that they now have to come out of pocket for.

So normally the insurance company will pay out directly to the mortgage company. The mortgage company will put that money into an escrow account and pay it out to your contractor and inspect the house and make sure that you are reestablishing the value in the home. You do have the option of taking the settlement funds and paying down or paying off the mortgage, and then you are left with the property in whatever state it’s in, and it’s yours to do with what you want. If you want to knock the house down and sell the land, great. If you want to fix it out of your pocket, that’s up to you. You’re not beholden to anyone.

Jana: Okay, so there are options.

Matthew Goldstein: I don’t necessarily encourage people to pay off their mortgage unless… It depends. It’s kind of a cost-benefit ratio. If you’ve got a million dollar settlement and you owe the mortgage company $25,000 left on your note, by all means, I think that’s a good investment to pay that off. Then you have control of your own money, and you can do what you want when you want to do it to whatever extent you want.

 If you’ve got a million-dollar claim and a million-dollar loan, then I don’t know. You have to take a look at what your future goals are and what you want to do. Do you want to rebuild the property? Do you want to have to come out of pocket to rebuild the property? Do you want to let the insurance company money rebuild the property for you and then still have to pay your mortgage? You still have that mortgage but have the value back in the property.

Jana: That brings up a question: the insurance company has contractors that they send in to do the pricing and get their evaluation figured out. But in my case, I knew so many contractors personally I couldn’t imagine using a stranger, even though they were perfectly good guys. I really wanted to use someone I knew. How often do people just go with the insurance company’s contractors, and is that easier? Would we have had fewer stumbles if we had gone with their contractor?

Matthew Goldstein: I think that uninformed people and people who are traumatized sometimes will simply say, okay, thank you for sending out X, Y, Z contractors. Go ahead and fix the house. And they don’t get involved in the pricing of the job. And sometimes, that contractor takes advantage of the homeowner, the insurance company, and what they charge. The job still gets done. It still gets done right, but is the price that they’re paying… They take advantage of the insurance policy, use it to the contractor’s benefit, and ensure they get a good deal out of it.

One of the things we’re going to do is to go out and get our own contractor to come in and write our own bid to compare it to the insurance companies and get the full amount, the proper settlement that you’re entitled to. And then, from there, the homeowner can choose whomever they want to make the repairs. In your instance, you knew people, so you could manage it yourself, get the best price, and use your own tradesmen. A lot of times that happens. A lot of times, people hire our contractors. It just depends. Every instance is sort of different.

Jana: Okay. Then, the next set of questions may be a bit out of your expertise, but you may be able to shine a bit of light on the process of securing and using the funds after the settlement is made. You started to talk a little bit about that, earlier. I understand the process can differ depending on the bank holding your mortgage or if you don’t have a mortgage. 

I’m sure that the reason for this process is so we cannot walk away from the property and travel the world with the money.

In our case, the funds were given to us to do the work on a percentage system. The insurance company gave the money to our mortgage holder, and the mortgage holder doled it out in increments, which I felt showed very little understanding of what the schedule to rebuild a house should look like. And the budget dollars were sent to both the contractor and me so that they had to be signed by both of us. It was an extremely challenging and time-consuming aspect that caused a lot of delays. And, it was a challenge  with the deadline to move out of our alternate housing. Is what happened to us with the cash flow process typical?

Matthew Goldstein: It is typical for a mortgage company to give the budget money out in draws. Usually, we see either one-third, one-third, and one-third, or sometimes they’ll do 50% upfront, then 25 and 25. Most insurance companies will send an inspector. We encourage people to use the 50% example to have your contractor call the mortgage company when they’re getting close to the 50% completion so they can send an inspector out and verify that yes, this work’s been done, this money has been spent, and they can release the next draw. Every mortgage company is different, so I can’t speak to how exactly they do it and how quickly they respond.

No mortgage company likes to give up money until the very last minute, making money on your money, but eventually, it gets done. But yes, I’ve heard of similar situations that you described where it causes delays in getting the money released. There are times when mortgage companies will keep a 10% retention until the job is done just to guarantee that the job gets done, and that causes people to have to come out of pocket. There are lots of different instances and lots of different ways that it’s done with a mortgage company. Everyone is different, and most of them are complicated and annoying.

Jana: And because the money now has gone from the insurance company to the mortgage company, that’s not something you’re in a position to negotiate.

Matthew Goldstein: No.

Jana: Right.

Matthew Goldstein: The mortgage company is named on the check as a condition of the insurance policy. Your insurance policy will have an additional loss payee clause that will name your mortgage company. And so that gives them the right to get named on the check, and then they put the money into the escrow, and from there… A homeowner can negotiate with their mortgage company about how much they will release sometimes. Depends upon the relationship. It depends on how long you’ve been with the bank. It depends on how much money you have in the bank. There are lots of different little nuances to it, but mostly, they hold onto it and give it out in draws.

Jana: Painfully so.

Matthew Goldstein: Yes.

Jana: So if there’s no mortgage holder, if you own your property outright, then you’re negotiating with the insurance company, and how is that money dispersed? How is that process handled?

Matthew Goldstein: Well, that’s simply a check written to you.

Jana: Okay.

Matthew Goldstein: Yeah, it’s similar. When you settle the contents portion of your claim, your mortgage company doesn’t own your contents, so they’re not named on the check. So, If you have no mortgage company, then the check just comes to you, and you’re responsible for keeping an eye on the contractor, making sure he has done what he says he has done, and for paying the contractor and/or not fixing your house and traveling the world with the money.

Jana: Right, exactly. That’s exactly where my head just went. I’m like, what could I see with that money in the world and then be homeless? But at least I will have had life experiences. And are there any differences in how the money process is handled if it’s a mudslide, hurricane, fire, or tree?

Matthew Goldstein : No, all of the payouts and all the claims are usually handled the same way.

Jana: Is there any way to help us understand the inspection system for determining the work that has been done to free up the next amount of funds? That is the vaguest, most frustrating thing in the entire process. It seems practically arbitrary, and it truly depends on whether the person visiting your home had a donut with their coffee in the morning or only had the coffee, not the sugar.

Matthew Goldstein: I would agree. I’ve heard horror stories of contractors calling for a mortgage inspection saying that they’re 50% done, and the guy comes out and says, well, I think you’re only 46% done, so I’m not giving you any more money. Call me in two weeks. From what I understand, you have to pay the mortgage company an inspection fee. Some mortgage companies charge $500 to send their inspector out.

Jana: Yeah, we had to pay for the inspection visits, but also, is there a published list that would help us understand what they expect to see at 50%? It just seemed unbelievably vague.

Matthew Goldstein: Yeah, that’s not something we normally get involved in once the funds are turned over to the homeowner or mortgage company. That’s between the mortgage company and the contractor. So that would be a good question for a contractor. I wouldn’t have the answer to that.

Jana: We wanted to take the opportunity while we are out of our home to make some additional structural improvements, as I was saying. What are we typically allowed to do?

We actually opened a wall, and we redesigned the interior of our home. While we were out of the home, it made complete sense if we were ever going to do extra work that we do it, then. So what are the rules? What are we allowed to do?

Matthew Goldstein: There really are no rules. A mortgage company, again, is going to look at you putting the value back into the home. They’re holding a note for X amount of dollars, so they want to make sure that you spend the money and put it back into the home, fix the home, and reestablish the value. The insurance company doesn’t necessarily care what you do as long as you put the money back into the home. So if you can take the funds and build an extension on the house or put in a pool, that’s really up to you. How you use the funds is up to you as long as you technically use them to fix the house.

Jana: On our project, I operated with that understanding. But I found that the insurance company’s adjuster was difficult and  judgemental of our process. 

 He was questioning the fact that it took a long time due to the money process and the negotiation process, to be able to get the work started. He was attributing the delays to the extra things we were doing, which was not what was causing the issues. So, does that kind of put an adversarial aspect to the work?

Matthew Goldstein: Yes, sometimes, there’s two factors there. One, it’s the living expenses, and if he sees that you are making wholesale improvements to the house that weren’t there before, and they look at that as possibly extending the time of repairs, and they don’t owe you for that, they owe you the time to put back the house the way it was. It’s also an issue with negotiating the settlement of the building claim. If we are asking for significantly more than what the insurance company is willing to offer, even if the scopes appear to be the same, if, for some reason, the insurance company understands that you want to add two rooms to the house, that they’re going to dig their heels and then say, well, you really don’t need that extra $25,000 because my price is too low.

You need that $25,000 because you’re adding stuff onto the house, so you’re insured for what you had previously at replacement costs, so that’s the overall goal, and then how you use those funds is really up to you. So I always encourage people to not necessarily discuss changes or upgrades that they want to make to their house with the insurance company. Keep that to yourself, and once the claim is settled, then you can figure out how you can vocalize to your contractor how you want to fix the house.

Jana: We settled first before we started the work, but then we did have some additional negotiation to do as a few things were discovered. I almost fell into the same tight spot that many of my clients do, which was to take the circumstances and possibly overbuild. We were considering an addition, and I came to my senses at a certain point and cut back on some of our plans. Do you ever need to reign in your clients and bring them back to the reality of what they can and should do under the circumstances because the insurance company is watching you?

Matthew Goldstein: Yes. We call it adjusting the client.

Jana: Adjusting the client. Yeah.

Matthew Goldstein: Before I came back to Southern California six years ago, I ran our Las Vegas office for 15 years, starting in 2001. I found that everyone in Las Vegas is looking for a deal. Everybody’s got an angle. It’s sort of a cliche for that city, but it’s true. Everybody’s looking at the insurance policy, and the insurance claim is a windfall to them. How can they take advantage of someone? There is that mentality in Southern California as well, but not to the same extent.

But there are times that people look at an insurance claim as a windfall and how they can turn their small one-bedroom house into a McMansion, and you really have to understand that you are insured for what you had and not for what you want. And within reason, we’re going to settle your claim, and we’re not going to. I personally am not going to commit insurance fraud for anyone. I don’t particularly want to go to jail and lose my license. So there are times when you have clients who have unreal expectations that you have to adjust their expectations.

Jana: I have a recent project I’m being interviewed for where these people feel that they’re in a tight place financially. It’s a Malibu fire, total loss, and they designed a multimillion-dollar home. Well, they could have designed a $1.5 million home and then afforded an interior designer to make the process easier for themselves. So they’re negotiating with me because they’re afraid they’re out of money.  You don’t have to triple the size of the home you lost,  you just have to build something you’re going to love.

Matthew Goldstein: Exactly.

Jana: After our roof was secured and we were safely housed, the next step was negotiating the settlement. After the property is stabilized and the scope of work is determined, what is the actual negotiation process for the settlement?

Matthew Goldstein: Both sides would exchange estimates and take a look and see how close together we are and identify the areas of dispute, whether it’s pricing for finished work, or labor or square footage that is different, or we feel that the flooring has to be replaced. The insurance company says, “Oh, no, you can fix the flooring.” Things like that are determined in the scope, and then there’s a negotiation that goes on until everyone agrees We do our best to reach a settlement with the insurance company. We present that to our client, and our client will accept it or say, “No, I think we need to go back and do a little bit more,” and we’ll go back and forth until the homeowner or the insured is happy and the insurance company’s happy, and a settlement is achieved.

Jana: And during that process, who are you talking to? the adjuster assigned to us by the insurance company ?

Matthew Goldstein: I’m talking to everyone. I’m talking to the insurance adjuster, I’m talking to the contractors, I’m talking to my client. We’re trying to find a happy medium for everyone. So I’ve got an adjuster who feels that we’re asking for too much money. I’ve got a homeowner who wants their home put back perfectly. I’ve got a contractor who knows how much it’s going to cost to rebuild the house, and he wants to make a little bit of money on it also. So we’ve got to mesh all three of those things into one comprehensive settlement.

Jana: And on the insurance company side, is it actually the adjuster that comes to the house that you’re negotiating with?

Matthew Goldstein: Yes

Jana: How are the differences between what we felt we should be covered and the insurance company’s interpretations negotiated? You had a guy that came out that did budgeting that wasn’t a contractor or an auditor. Tell us about that guy.

Matthew Goldstein: I think in your situation, we used an estimator who’s a licensed contractor and doesn’t necessarily look to rebuild a property. Still, he is a contractor, utilizes the computer programs we use for estimating, and prepares an estimate for the repairs. So it’s similar to a contractor. It’s just someone who’s not necessarily looking for a job. If a homeowner feels that they have their own contractor they want to use, we’ll just bring in an estimator as opposed to a contractor.

Jana: Okay. I see. So, the Greenspan Company website said that you should not proceed with the permanent work until you have an agreement. We lost a couple of months to the process of valuation and negotiation, which increased the months we had available to be housed. At a certain point, you felt that we needed to get the work started before the replacement of our kitchen was negotiated, and we expected to be able also to negotiate some funds for the repair of our landscaping during the process. How far along do you usually get in the negotiations and settlement before you suggest the work gets started?

Matthew Goldstein: It depends upon the situation. Every claim is different. I always encourage people to clean up the house, secure the house. If there’s demolition and debris removal that needs to be done, that’s something that’s important to do right away because depending upon where the building is, it could be, we call it an attractive nuisance. You’ll get looters who will go in there. I’ve got commercial buildings in downtown LA that you’re running off people every day who are going in there trying to steal the copper or steal the debris because they can make money on that and you don’t want to have an unsafe situation. So that sort of stuff you want to do as quickly as possible. From there, we get an estimate put together and we negotiate a claim. It’s never our intention to extend a negotiation or make it take longer than it should. Sometimes depending upon the insurance company, the insurance adjuster, the coverages, there’s a lot of factors that dictate how long a settlement takes to negotiate.

There are times when, yes, I will encourage someone while we’re in the process of getting something done to start work. I can think of a situation now where I’ve got an insurance company who’s taking an extended period of time in responding with an estimate, but the homeowner is anxious to get back in his home. So we’ve had the demolition done, we’ve had the framing, the numbers on areas of things that we’re not too far apart on. We’ve had the framing redone, the roof is getting done. These are things that we’ve agreed with the insurance companies that need to be done. We may have to go back and negotiate a price later, but it’s okay to get that started to keep the ball rolling.

Jana: Yeah, we actually had some small fuzzy looters in our house. We used to get here in the morning, and there would be raccoon tracks inside, and it took us a couple of days, or maybe longer, to figure out that we hadn’t placed the permanent closure in our cat door, so we had  raccoons that lived in our house while we were gone.

Matthew Goldstein: Interesting.

Jana: The fees for your services were based on our settlement amount. Can you explain to us how that works?

Matthew Goldstein: Sure. We charge a percentage of what we recover on your behalf. That percentage varies depending on the size of the claim. There are other factors involved, but essentially, it’s negotiable based on the size of the claim is the easiest way to put it. And it’s a contingency fee. We don’t take money upfront. There are no expenses that you’re charged for. If we, for some reason, don’t recover anything or your claim is denied, then you don’t owe us any money.

Jana: Is there a dollar amount at which a person should look for a public adjuster, and an amount under which it doesn’t really pay ?

Matthew Goldstein: I would always encourage someone to consult with a professional in any instance. Is Greenspan going to take on a small $10,000 water loss when you’ve got a $2,500 deductible? Probably not because it doesn’t pay for our service. We’re going to have to charge such a fee that at the end of the day, you’re going to pay us more money than you’re going to have left, and then you’re not going to be able to fix your house or your business. And we’re not in business to do  that. We’re not in the business just to make money. We love to make money, sure. But at the same time, we’re also here as an advocate and want to make sure that our clients can reestablish their lives and our cost is minimal or of no impact to them because we increase the settlement to the extent that we pay for ourselves.

Jana: I can personally attest to the fact that you legitimately helped us significantly increase our claim, rightfully so, from what was first proposed by the insurance company. How often is that the case where you’re able to increase the settlement to the point that you’re covered?

Matthew Goldstein: Oh, every time. That’s our goal in every situation. We’re pretty good at evaluating something before we even go into it, especially when we can see the insurance policy. For example, take a look at a large industrial fire, if we can take a look at the policy and see how much coverage is, we can have a pretty good understanding of the value of that claim before we get started.  So we can figure out what’s a fair percentage that we can charge and make some money and make sure that the business owner, the building owner, has the ability to reestablish themselves as if the incident never happened.

And there are good public adjusters, and there are bad public adjusters. I think it’s that way in any industry. And yes, there are people in my industry who will go out and charge you next to nothing, but then they’re going to put forth that effort, or at the same time, you’re going to have people who overcharge when they shouldn’t take advantage of people. So one of the things about our reputation is that we’re very fair and make sure that everybody ends up equally.

Jana: So Matt, is the insurance company glad that I called you, or do they not want a public adjuster on the project?

Matthew Goldstein: I would say the majority of the time; they’re not happy that we’re involved because they know that we are going to utilize every aspect of the policy and get the homeowner or the business owner everything that they’re entitled to. There are times, depending upon the size of the claim and the level of the adjuster, where there’s mutual respect. the larger claims that I tend to handle, you get larger level adjusters who have as much experience as I do. They appreciate the fact that we’re involved because I may have 40 or 50 active clients, most insurance adjusters have closer to a 100 to 200. So they have a lot going on, and if they know that I’m involved, I’m going to do all the work for them, I’m going to put together the estimates, and I’m going to put together the claim.

So when I hand it to them and they know our reputation is that we’re going to do it right the first time that they are happy that we’ve done their job for them and they just simply need to review it and rubber stamp it and it’s done. 9 times out of 10, though it’s adversarial, they’re not happy. But again, that depends upon the carrier. It depends upon the experience of the insurance adjuster what they’ve experienced in the past. Again, there are good public adjusters, and there are bad public adjusters, and there are some people who leave a bad taste in the insurance company’s mouth, and that sort of taints the business for everyone.

Jana: In closing this segment of the discussion, in our experience your services greatly enhanced  our settlement and got us through a horribly challenging time. My tip to people is to be careful with your funds and to stay realistic about what you can accomplish with what you settle on. Do you have any final words of the wise to share?

Matthew Goldstein: Yeah, understanding the claim, it is a traumatic experience, and people tend to make rash decisions sometimes, and people need to think about what’s going on in their lives. One of the unfortunate situations, and I don’t know if it happened to you or not, is when you have a loss, especially a fire. It’s public because it’s on the news, people are bombarded with people from our industry, whether it’s contractors or public adjusters. That’s just how it works. Sometimes people make rash decisions, and they don’t think it through, they want people to go away, so they just sign a contract, and that’s that.

I always encourage people to think about the process, wait, study, go to websites, look at the people. If it’s a contractor, look at their reviews on Yelp and look at reviews on the contractor’s board. Make sure people don’t have complaints filed against them. Same thing with public adjusters. We have a website, we have Yelp reviews, and we have Better Business Bureau reviews. I think you can probably go to the Department of Insurance since we’re all licensed in California, and look at our licenses and ensure we’re in good standing. So do your research and ask questions, and there are no dumb questions. If you don’t know what’s going on, ask a question. You’ve never experienced this, and this is what I do on a daily basis.

So, we understand how to help.

Jana: I think personal recommendations are really important. You don’t know who in your circle might have experienced working with a public adjuster. You were personally recommended to me by a builder that I trusted, which helped me considerably, although I certainly did a little bit of research at the time, and I’m so glad you were on our side.

 I want everyone to know that if they have any additional questions about a property loss they are experiencing, the contact information for the Greenspan Company Adjusters International is on our website, and you can check out their website. 

Our website is fromdisastertodreamhome.com, and you can click right onto their website from ours. Thank you for your guidance through my personal insurance claim, and thank you so much for your time and expertise for our listeners.

Matthew Goldstein: You’re very welcome, Jana. It was lovely to see you and I’m glad you’re back in your home and seemingly happy.

Jana: It’s unbelievable what we actually accomplished, and every year it becomes more and more of a distant memory, and as long as the other two trees that are in front of my house don’t fall, I hope not to need your services.

Matthew Goldstein: I don’t particularly care for repeat customers when it comes to homeowners. You can have one incident and that’s it.

Jana: Yep. That’s a good policy. Thanks so much, Matt.

Matthew Goldstein: You’re very welcome. Thank you.

Thank you for joining us on this episode of From Disaster to Dream Home, the podcast that takes you inside the home building and rebuilding process. Each week we bring you time tested practices and the latest trends through conversations with top professionals in the building industry. You can find other episodes of From Disaster to Dream Home at ewnpodcastnetwork.com, as well as Spotify, Apple Podcast, Audible and most other major podcast streaming services. Need design help? You can contact us or find out more about our guests at fromdisastertodreamhome.com. Until next time, let us guide and inspire you as you create the home of your dreams.