52: Mold Insurance Playbook with Corey Levy

Hello again, everyone, and welcome to today's show. If you're one of the 130 million people that are dealing with Sirs Lyme disease, autoimmune disease, or other conditions that are impacted by mold on a daily basis, and you need to learn how to eliminate that exposure, then you're in the right place. My name is Brian Carr, and you're listening to Mold Finders Radio.

Hello.

Hello. We are back. We are here. It's another day, another episode. Exciting stuff. I am Brian. You guys know me, But I got a special surprise. Corey Levy, everyone.

I'm back by popular demand too, I hear, right?

Yeah, very, very popular. I mean, honestly though, people actually do really did really enjoy our last one. And so do another one. And this we'll probably do more. So that's cool. So, yeah, I hope so too. So we, Corey and I talk like before we get on these things. We talk like literally all day, every day. But before we get on to these things and we're trying to figure out, okay, what do we want to talk about today? And so we thought a good topic would be talking about insurance and how does it work and does it cover mold issues and all of those questions. Because as questions we get asked a lot, right.

Almost every day, about three or four times a day, I get questions about insurance. And unfortunately, I see people make the wrong decisions too many times. And I thought it was such a great topic for us to discuss today so we can help the listeners avoid making these missteps in the early beginning part of their journey through finding these problems.

Yeah, which is cool. I think it's going to be. I think it's going to be a good episode. People are going to like it. But what you just said is really important, the early part of the process. And actually, why don't you just kind of go more into that and kind of what happens if we're of when you're involving insurance at the wrong time and how that can cause problems.

Yeah, totally. So, you know, to remind everybody of what my role is in our organization, I'm. I'm the front man. I am the person who talks to everybody who calls into our different mold inspection companies before booking the appointment. And so I get a common question of, hey, doesn't insurance cover mold? And the short answer is, yes, it can. But it really comes down to many variables. But it's important to note that the insurance company is always going to be the last person that you call through this process because the second that you pick up the phone to call them and make a claim that you have a mold problem, they are going to immediately want to send out an adjuster, which is a verifier essentially, who comes into your home and, and make sure you're not lying about the mole problem and make the determination on whether or not this is going to be something that they're going to agree to cover.

So funny that you say they're going to send someone out to make sure you're not lying about the mole problem because the way that they go about validating if there's a mole problem is just like a big lie anyway. So, so ironic.

But what's even crazier about that, Brian, is they don't actually typically even do this themselves. It's all third party contracted out. So if you, let's say, have, you know, insurance company, a right big insurance company that covers the entire country, has multiple different insurance opportunities. They're really just that, just a company that if something actually happens, they do pay you. But it's not like they're sending an actual company insurance A agent out to your house to verify they have another company that they pay to go out and do the adjusting. So what type of response do you think you're going to get from a third party who has vested interest to give information back to the insurance company that is favorable for the insurance company?

That's such a good point, and I've said it a bunch of times throughout these episodes, is that you always have to think about the motivation behind whoever's giving you their opinion. Right. Like, so what you're just describing, and let's just throw this out there, I think we all know this, like insurance company's jobs are to not pay you. Like that's their job. Right. If they paid everybody out and they paid a lot, they'd all be out of business. So like their entire structure, the whole, their whole business model is to take money from you every month and do whatever they possibly can to never give it back to you. That's their business model. And so, you know, I think we all kind of understand that. But then getting more into it, what you were just talking about, so now they're subcontracting out for somebody to go out and take a look at a house and give them the information. Well, that subcontractor has, they actually have a contract with the insurance company. They get paid by the insurance company to go out and do this. So, okay, so their livelihood is based on the insurance companies sending them opportunities to go out and look for houses. So to Your point? Why the hell would they say there's a problem? They're totally going to downplay it. Because they want to keep their contract.

Of course. Of course. And you know, at the end of the day, they're not even the ones making the determination. And if anybody's ever been through the insurance policy, you know, trying to get coverage from an insurance person, I'm sure you already know this and I'm sure you have less hair than you did before going into it. But, you know, at the end of the day, they come out, they do their inspection, and if everyone could see me, I'm doing air quotes of the home and then nobody can see you. Nobody can see you. They take pictures and they send them off to what I call a desk adjuster, which is somebody at the insurance company that essentially reviews the notes from the person in the field, the photos, and then makes their determination. These adjusters that the field adjusters that come out to the home, they have to do a lot of these, right? There's a high volume that they have to go through. Many times they're on site for like 10 to 15 minutes. How are you going to make a determination on what is covered and not covered in that amount of time period? And so if you don't have a game plan, when these people walk into the door, guess who is leading the charge forward on how this is going to go? The adjuster. Right. The guy who's walking in the door. So that means they're setting the stage. You never want to call your insurance company until you've gone through what's called discovery first, which is having your expert, your inspector, your leak detection person, your plumber, your engineer, whoever it is involved in that process to finding these problems before you even pick up the phone to the insurance company. Because if you let them lead with their, their first, they're going to set the stage and you're going to get the same quality of work back with that asterisk on it of an individual who likely either may have a vested interest into giving information back appropriately, but also really, guys, they just don't have the training. Right. They're not mold specialists or not plumbers, they're not engineers. They don't have the training to come in and do this type of inspection that we're talking about.

Yeah, I mean, think about it this way. Like we think.

I used. So for those of you who care, way back when in my previous life, I used to work in advertising and there was this shirt that came out that we all wore around the office one day because we thought it was funny. And it said, advertising helps me decide. And we just thought it was really funny. And the reason I bring that up, like, we think that our insurance companies are, like, all about helping us, right? You got Nationwide is on your side, and you got. You're in good hands with Allstate, and you got all this stuff that. That's not what's happening, all right? That's. That's marketing ploys. Okay? The reality is, is that you're basically, when you're submitting a claim, you're kind of going to war with your insurance company. And it's as if you're going to court. You just got to think of it that you're going to court. That's what you're doing. And so when Corey uses the phrase discovery, that's a legal phrase. That's a court phrase when they're in discovery. And. And that's what you have to do. You have to treat this as if you're going to go in there, because if you go in there thinking that they're going to be your buddy, they're just going to try to take complete advantage of you. And then once they set the expectation at the front, it's this dynamic shift that Corey's talking about. Like, the reason that you do insurance all the way at the end is because you want to be able to provide all of the information up front and set the stage of, here are the problems. Now it's your job to prove that it's not a problem versus have them come in, do what Corey just described in 15 minutes. And then now they've said that there's no problem, everything's fine. And now you're trying to fight this uphill battle, proving that there is when they've already, you know, changed the shift of that. That conversation.

Yeah. And. And to further that, too, right, Brian? It's. It's. Let's say they find a problem. Let's say it's an obvious issue, right? Because some of the people that are listening to this show, it's not just, I can't see it. I have no idea where it is. Sometimes there's an obvious problem going on. A dishwasher leaked, or there was a pipe from the bathroom that exploded and flooded my kitchen, Whatever it may be. Sometimes it is very obvious to see the problem. You still want to have your experts come in beforehand because insurance companies create vendor lists, and these vendor lists essentially are. You have to sign up in some cases. And actually, for many insurance companies, you have to pay to get on the list. And then furthermore, you have to offer discounted pricing to the insurance company to be on that list continuously.

So explain that more.

Yeah, so let's use a scenario. You know, I like the name Janice. Janice calls her insurance company.

Janice calls the insurance company. She says, my dishwasher leaks. Can you send somebody out? I need to make a claim. I'm worried that there's mold. Please send somebody. Today. The adjuster comes out, they look at the problem. They say, yep, there's definitely a leak going on here. I'm going to have my, my local vendor Come out, Mr. Restoration, and take a look at this job and give me a quote on what it's going to be to clean up. So number one, insurance companies, unless you're in a state where you have to do, you have to take testing before you perform any type of restoration or remediation, there's only about five or six in the country that do that. They're just going to try and skip the testing and go right to remediation. And if you're a listen of mold Finders radio, you already know the problems that come with that. So they're going to send some person in who's already offering a discounted price for this service, and they're going to eyeball this thing and say, yeah, I see this. Remove the dishwasher, cut a small piece of the wall out here. I could do this, no problem. And they submit the cost of that directly to the insurance company.

However, the insurance company, remember, is getting that at a discounted rate. So that if you decided I didn't like Mr. Restoration, he was rude to me when he came into my home. I didn't like the way that he talked to me. Whatever the reason being, it doesn't matter. The reason you didn't like the way the guy showed up 15 minutes late. Doesn't matter. You are allowed to use whoever you want when people do remediation in your home. But you now let the insurance company get a price of, let's say, $5,000 to do a job that normally is 7,500 or $10,000. So the insurance company already set the stage of what that price is. You're never going to be able to match that retail pricing with a company that is giving an adjusted rate to your insurance company because they're on the vendor list.

So think of it this way. Like if you go to buy a car, the car dealership buys the car for a certain cost. Like, we all know that, right? But Then they sell it to you at a cost that's higher than that. Right. So you have wholesale versus retail. So basically, the deal the insurance company makes with these vendors, in order for them to get the business, in order for the vendors to get the business from the insurance companies, they have to make this deal where they give wholesale pricing. So if you're getting to what Corey's saying, so now you're getting a quote that's a wholesale quote. They don't mark it up to retail and give it back to you and say, okay, well, if you go somewhere else, it would cost retail, but since we have an in with this guy, it's cheaper. No, they just say this is the cost of it, like, and that's that. So it's almost like the books are getting cooked a little bit when it goes through that way.

Yeah. And, you know, going back to this idea, or not even idea, the problem that exists, a vested interest, Right? You, these guys are going in and, you know, addressing the obvious problems, right? They're going. Because there's no testing typically done unless the homeowner pushes for it. And even then there's going to be pushback on that. You're only getting what they can visually see. But also these guys are offering discounted rates, which means their margins are lower, which means they're going to want to get in and out of this job a lot quicker. So the saying you get what you pay for exists for a reason. You're getting what you're paying for. In this particular case, even if you're not the one paying for it and the insurance company is paying for it, it's still a discounted service.

Yeah, that's such a good point. It's really thinking about the whole connection of who's paying who, who's influenced by who, who's trying to keep who else happy, like all that stuff. And when you really start, like, going down that hole and you start thinking about people's motivations on why they're doing stuff, you're like, oh, well, this makes so much sense now. Like, why would I ever want to, you know, work with so and so if I know that their whole point, their whole goal is to. Is to get the person that sent me my name to send them more names. Right? So it just like, is a cycle. So we've spent about 15 minutes talking about how much remediate or how much insurance companies suck. So.

Let'S start talking about how to actually handle this. All right, so, okay, first off, I'm. I'm gonna Play the role of someone calling in and talking, you know, asking you questions about this. Because like you said, you. This is multiple times a day, right? So my name's Janice. No.

Anyways, so the first question is like, like, will insurance cover this at all? Like, is more covered at all.

So, yes, it is covered, but it has to be off of what's called the covered loss, Janice. And.

The covered loss is a really important term. And so mold, Quick history lesson here. Mold used to be covered, full stop. If you had a mold test done, this is probably about 20, 25 years ago, and it came back positive. It didn't matter how the mold got into your house. If you could prove there was a mold problem, you could send the results in the remediation plan to the insurance company. And they were writing checks and there was an actual mold rush. Just like there was a gold rush, There was a mold rush on insurance companies well over 20 years ago. And it created this massive run on the insurance companies where they were just writing too many checks. So nowadays the way that it works is you have to prove the mold problem came from a water loss issue within the home that was known as sudden and accidental.

So let's jump into that a little bit more. Sudden and accidental is some sort of water loss. That water loss that suddenly happens like a dishwasher gives out or a pipe leaks and floods a particular area and accidentally happens. It's not like you walked up to the pipe and said, I don't like the way this pipe looks anymore. I'm just going to hit it and cause a water problem. Right. It has to happen without some sort of issue that you malicely caused that problem.

I, Janice, have anger management issues that may have happened.

Right, right, right. Don't do that. Now, ultimately, right? Anything, any damage that happens from that water is going to be covered under this claim that you're making. So let's use the dishwasher as an example. Dishwasher tube gives out, it floods the kitchen, it goes down into the crawl space. And now you've got water in your crawl space. This is a big problem. Okay? Now mold is going to start forming in 24 to 48 hours. We all know that. And so this dishwasher, you may not have been seeing the water come out. It could have taken days. So now let's say we're a week later, you're going to have a pretty serious mold problem, not just in your kitchen, but down subgrade in the crawl space area as well. So you need to be able to tie the mold that is in the crawl space and the mold that is in the kitchen back to the initial water loss that was caused. So this is all part of the documentation that needs to get done when you're going back to your insurance and the importance to actually test because you have your water loss defined but inside of your claim. So when you make a claim to an insurance company, you get water restoration money and you get mold remediation money. So think of this bucket and you have two. One, one umbrella and you've got two buckets underneath it. The water, the water restoration money is always pretty high. If you look at your insurance policy, typically for water damage, you could get almost up to $100,000, sometimes more, depending on your policy for water restoration. And then you've got a mold bucket. This is where it's limiting. A mold bucket 10 can tend to cap out at $15,000, sometimes $10,000. I've seen times where it goes up to 25 or $30,000 for that particular incident.

And I've seen it at 5. It's, you know, it's called a writer sometimes. So it's like the mold rider that gets attached and you can, I guess, pay a little more in your premiums in order to up that coverage. You know, that's a really good point.

Yeah. If you're looking to buy a new home and listening to this, buy the.

Mold rider as much, as much as they'll give you. Buy it, costs you 10 bucks a month or whatever. It's worth it, I promise.

It is worth it. And typically with the mold rider, you get more coverage too. Like you get more options for not just some sort of like incidental incident that happened. You're going to get more ability to tie it to other things instead of this sudden and accidental problem.

You know what's funny about like these two buckets, the water and the mold bucket, is that the mold doesn't exist without the water. Like, it's the most ridiculous thing. Mold is a water loss problem. It's what it is, you know, but it's, you know, it's hard to get rid of and it's. And so it costs money. And so they made it this whole separate thing. But that's why, just side note, in our reports, when we do assessments, everything is geared around water, right? So like, if we're seeing even that, we think that it looks like that there's maybe mold or something somewhere. If there's any sort of water damage around it, we're calling out, you know, there's Bubbling or buckling or staining evidence of, of previous water intrusion. We're, we're hammering the water thing over and over and over again in these reports. So that, that is an ammunition piece for you guys when you go in and try to do this whole process that Corey's outlining.

Yeah. And so it's important to have the outline for the remediation because ultimately that remediation plan, which coming from us or a company like ours. Right. The inspector, is your game plan and action plan that ultimately still needs to go to a third party company. Remember, guys, never work with a company that does both inspections, testing, and remediation. No, no, no. That needs to go to another company that is a third party that does the remediation.

Hey, real quick on that. Let me just, let me just say why. Because some people. I know that people have looked at that, right? And they're like, oh, they did all of it. So sorry to cut you off, but here's the reason why is that again, vested interests. Right? So if I'm doing the inspection and then I'm coming in and I'm saying, all right, there's a lot of mold problems in this house. There's like 15 sources of mole problems. Okay, cool. I'm also going to do the work to fix all that. Stu, isn't it in my best interest to say you have more problems in your house, so then I could charge you more on the remediation front? The answer is yes. And that's why you don't ever have one company do both of them. Okay.

So that, that, and just on the other flip side of it too, I'd say more often than, than that happening. But that does happen a lot. You. The, the training is completely different. I mean, you know, this, like a certified mold remediators training is about the work of remediation. They are not trained to do inspections. They're not trained on how to perform sampling. It is completely different. And so you, you end up getting somebody in here who's in the mold industry, but they don't actually understand the appropriate approach for assessing and testing a building.

It's very, very true. It's kind of like your surgeon, like coming in and telling you, like what, like what's going on with you for things that don't require cutting you open. That's why there's different, different departments. All right, sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off. Go ahead.

No, no, no. And now that you did cut me off, you're lost.

I knew it was gonna happen. When I did, I should have kept my mouth shut.

Oh no, I do, I remember. Okay, so the reason why you have the report is so you take it to your remediation company and the remediation company is going to put together a bid for the work that needs to get done in that report. So they're actually going to take the report. They're going to say, okay, the company said I need to do X, Y and Z in the kitchen. They're going to come out, take their measurements, do all their different, you know, sizing of the different areas and they're going to put together the cost to clean this up. And that is what is going to be the retail. We talked about wholesale and retail, the retail pricing of what the market is actually yielding to clean something like that up. So you actually are going to know before you've even picked up your phone to your insurance company what something like this is going to cost to clean. So that if the insurance company comes out and sends their adjuster and tells you, yeah, I'll write you a check for $5,000, you could laugh in their face and say, well, I've already spoken to X, Y and Z companies, remediation companies, and they've all given me different bids and I know this is a $15,000 job. So again, you're making them work with you, right? So you want to be able to have that information. But it's important when you're working with a remediation company to make sure they're using the appropriate verbiage in their reports, just as we do to make sure you're maximizing your coverage. To give you an example, if you had that water leak in the kitchen and the water damage came down into the crawl space and affected the kitchen, they need to say they're moving water damaged building materials like flooring from the kitchen area. They're cleaning up water damage in the crawl space and they're going to price it out as such. So they'll line item it. You always want to see a line item list from a remediation company saying it's going to be $780 to remove the water damaged floor in the kitchen. It's going to be $1,000 to remove the soil underneath the crawl space that's soaked with water from the flood. This is what the insurance company is going to be utilizing to know where to put the dollar amounts in those buckets we talked about before. So if you've got a company coming in and saying mold remediation of the flooring in the kitchen, mold, remediation of the soil and the crawl space. Your bucket of $15,000 is going to be gone like that. So you need to make sure the right verbiage is being used so you can kind of move money into the right areas so that you're utilizing and maximizing the amount of dollars you're getting back from insurance.

That is such a good. If, if they take nothing out of this, that piece is so important. It's so good because they're going to want to move money into the places where there's less coverage. But if they're writing things in a certain way, then they kind of. They can't. Right? And so this means that you have to tell your. You have to tell the remediators, like, have a conversation with them, like, this is what we're doing. I need you to word stuff like this for, for me. Are you comfortable doing that? And if they're not, then find someone else who is, you know, because it's. It's not like it's. They're lying about anything, right? It's just, can you help me out? Because I'm going to be submitting this. And by the way, if you help me out, I'll probably hire you. I mean, that's how it goes, right? So yeah, most of the time they'll do that. It was such, such a good point. Okay, so let's like recap where we are. Okay, so Janice walks into her kitchen. Dishwasher, floods, leaks everywhere. She, she now she does not call the insurance company because she knows that she's not supposed to do that. So instead she actually let's add another step that's not insurance, but just so people, let's like walk through this whole sequence. First thing you have to do is get the water issue fixed, right? It's like, that's like, stop the water. Stop the water. Step one, you'll probably be looking at some sort of like first responder water restoration kind of company to just come out, get it stopped, and just kind of start trying to dry stuff like. And that's kind of where that happened. But then right after that. So now we stop the water. It's not happening anymore. Next inspection, right, the step two. So now we've done the inspection and we've got the testing that basically validates and shows the correlation between dishwasher leak and how it's impacted, maybe cabinetry that's next to it and other things that are kind of in that same area. And then it's gone down in the crawl space. And we've connected all of that stuff and we've used the right language and we basically tied it all to this. This sudden water loss, an accidental water loss, not anger management water loss. Then now that you have that, you're still not calling your insurance company. I know you really want to. Don't do it yet. You're not calling them yet. Now you're getting remediation companies out to get bids on that. Okay. So now we've done these three things. We've stopped a water issue. We've gotten all of the actual technical data that's proving that there is mold problems and there's. And with that, by the way, it's not just mold testing that's happening, but they're also doing moisture detection, they're doing moisture readings. They're doing things like that to help show, like, the impact of where the water went also. So that's also helpful with that. Yeah, because a lot of times, you know, we don't see mold. Right. So if it gets under flooring in a kitchen, you know, who says you have to rip up the whole kitchen floor? The insurance guy probably just looks and says, well, it's just wet right over here. But if you have moisture readings and the floor, floor that's all the way across the kitchen, that shows that it's wet. Now you got to remove the whole kitchen. And now you're showing that. Right. So that's why that's part of it. So then we have all that. Then we get the remediation company out. They're getting bids. Now you are armed with technical information in terms of, like, lab results and infrared scans and moisture readings. You're armed with bids for multiple remediation companies. And you're building up your ammunition pile here so you can go after the insurance company. So that's where we are.

Yeah. And so perfect. Listing that out now that you have it all, that's when you can call your insurance company. That's the next step. That's when you call and you make the claim to the insurance company. And I always tell people this, less is more. If you've ever called your insurance company, what is it that's always warned Brian, when you're calling an insurance company before someone gets on the line, don't say.

Anything that that's gonna ruin your. Ruin your. Your chances. It's the same thing in court. You don't offer information that they can then use against you. Right, right. Same thing.

Because. Yeah. Every line is recorded. Yep, every line is recorded before you ever get on the phone with somebody, so remember they are hanging on every word that you say. So less is more. Hey, I had a water leak in my house. I had X, Y and Z mold specialists come out and do the testing. And I have a remediation company that I found that I want them to fix the water problem. Always use water. Always use water. And I'd like to open up a claim and they may start to grill you and ask you a bunch of questions, say, hey, I'd rather just send you the report. I'd rather just send you the bid. And can you please direct all questions to the professionals? I will always recommend sending the questions to the remediation or the restoration company over you talking to the insurance company. Because the remediation company deals with insurance every single day. So they're going to know what to say. They're also going to know how to stand by the bid that they put together. And it's going to make the process a lot easier for you if you put trust in the people that deal with this on a daily basis and kind of just play dumb. Right? Oh, hey, I came home and I found water and I just called them right away. Right. So never give timelines. Don't ever tell them it happened on X date and you did this, this and this. You don't know you found it and you acted right away.

There you go.

And then what's going to happen is they're going to say, I want to send an adjuster. Excellent. Schedule that. If you can schedule it with your remediation company on the same day so they're there together, say, okay, excellent. Can you send me your availability? I'd like to make sure my remediation company is here when your adjuster is here.

Yeah, I can't stress how many times when I, when I have clients who listened to everything up to where Brian said, you know, this is where we are. The steps that he talked to and then calling the insurance company and then they have the adjuster come out and he starts asking a bunch of questions when he's on site and the, the homeowner starts stumbling and says the wrong thing and it ends up costing them a lot of money. Right. Having your remediation company there. The remediation company is going to walk through with them and, and say, hey, look at this, look at this. This is why I have to do this. So that you don't need to do anything but sit back, keep your mouth shut and try and get as much as you possibly can out of this and let the experts talk and go through this process. Because at the end of the day, it's in the remediation company's best interest to do this as well, to make sure that they're doing their job to the best of their ability, that they have the ability to do it the right way because they don't want to do it the wrong way. That looks bad on them and it gives them the ability to make sure that it's done once and they can move on to help the next person. And so being there and guiding the adjuster is going to go a long way.

Yeah, it's great because you've taken all of. You've been so cautious on the phone, you're not saying a whole lot. And then as soon as someone is there, like they're trained to ask questions. Right. They know what to ask. And so to your point, like as the homeowner, you don't know all the answers to this stuff. And then you start just like we all do with a lot of things. We start just kind of like assuming stuff and just saying, oh yeah, you know, probably this and that. Next thing you know, you just, you've just screwed yourself.

Right.

So, yeah.

So I do want to say one thing too though, because we are talking about a scenario in which it's an obvious problem. And so many times it's not an obvious problem. And the same steps need to be followed. Just because you had somebody come out and you don't see any water damage and let's say you just had a mold problem. You had, you went to your practitioner and they told you that you, you know, the way you've been feeling. I found mycotoxins in your body. You know, get somebody out there to find the mold problem. Mold doesn't always come from a sudden and accidental issue. It could be a building related problem problem. So you still want to follow these steps. The insurance company is always going to be the last person you call. However, there may be another person you need to throw in the mix to help through, and that's a public adjuster. Brian, are you familiar with public adjusters? I'm sure you are because you're an expert.

I am, but you know who's not? Janice. She's never heard of it.

Oh, Janice, let me explain to you about a public adjuster. A public adjuster is for the public. You've got your insurance adjuster who is for insurance. A public adjuster works with the homeowner. They're essentially kind of like a lawyer in that they actually negotiate on your behalf towards the insurance company.

So when you're dealing with a case where it's not cut and dry, where you don't see a dishwasher that clearly leaked and caused all this problem, and the insurance company is, is going to give you pushback and, and your inspection company should be able to tell you, hey, look, based off what I'm seeing here, very, very slim chance that you're just going to have an adjuster walk in here and say that this was related to a sudden and X and L debt, some type of damage. Right. Maybe it was an old leak that had occurred. Maybe it's windows that are leaking. Maybe it's, you know, seepage coming through the foundation walls. There's a variety of different things that are not traditionally covered by insurance due to wear and tear that happens on the building and ultimately is the responsibility of the building owner to maintain and prevent these problems from happening. But that doesn't mean that you're out of the. You're, you're out of it. These adjusters are really good at becoming the quarterback in these type of plays. They bring in the appropriate experts. You still have to prove to the adjuster that there's a problem. You can't just call a public adjuster up and say, hey, I think I have a problem. There's mold here. They're going to say, great, where is it? You need to still go through the discovery, the inspection process, outlining the problems, identifying where the potential water issues are. And they're going to take your policy, they're going to take your expert report, your remediation bids. They may say to you, hey, look, I'm seeing this window issue here. Let's bring in an engineer. I want him to take a look at this as well and see if there's a bigger problem here than what the mold guys have found here. So it's about putting the right people to play. And then they go on your behalf to the insurance company and they actually negotiate the different claims because you may have a problem in your crawl space, in your attic, underneath your kitchen sink. And each of these are different water events that occurred, causing different sources of mold within the problem. So now you're looking at a very different type of a project. And you need somebody to put these pieces together and go to the insurance company and get that money for you.

Yeah, and, and like, listen, guys, it's not our job to know our insurance policies. Right? Like you're supposed to read them, but who understands all that stuff, you know, to think that it's almost kind of arrogant, almost to think that I'm going to go in and completely understand this. Like, we have to know what we don't know and be okay with that, you know?

Yeah.

And, yeah, I don't know that stuff, and I talk to people about it all the time. But when I. If I don't know, like the specifics of every policy, but you know, who does? Somebody who's an insurance expert. And I said it earlier, and we've kind of been like throwing out these legal terms back and forth. This is a court case. This is what it is. You're just not going into a courtroom. Right. But it is. Their. Their insurance adjuster is like an attorney. And if you're going into them on your own, it's as if you're trying to represent yourself against an attorney. You would never walk into court and do that, you know, especially for something that's super complicated. Listen in. In the, in the first scenario we described, it might be a little more straightforward. It might be okay if you're getting all of your ducks in a row and you're really prepared. But when you start talking about which is honestly the most of you listening to this, you're going to fall in this other category. There's multiple hidden problems in the house. Right. It's not some sudden issue that happened. Right. We talk about age of home all the time. We talk about all these things accumulate and it builds up the load in the house and all these different things like the H vac system's impacted, you know, the crawl space has. It's not one sudden event. And so to think that we could.

The thought sometimes is that that's all going to get covered under one claim, you know, and it's. They're all different things. So it's really important to have somebody to help you, like, navigate your policy, figure out everything that's been going on. And to Corey's point, the same way that an attorney will, they might advise to bring in different experts to get even more information. You're building your case. This whole thing is about building your case.

Yeah. And the cool thing about it is, unlike an attorney who's going to bill you off of a retainer, the hours spent, most of these insurance adjusters, they work off commission. So you're getting somebody who is motivated to get you as much money as possible. They typically take anywhere From, I'd say, 10 to 15% of the total bill that they get back. So if you get back $20,000, they take 10% of that. Right. And so I always see when people go the route of taking and working with a public adjuster, they're always getting way more money than you'd be able to get on your own anyways, because they're experts in insurance. And a lot of times these guys work in the industry. They know they, they're used to working with State Farm or nationwide, and they know people in these companies. Remember, these insurance companies, they're still corporations. These people have budgets to oversee. Right. They're given. Okay. You know, Mr. Smith, in the Northeast, you have these. These territories. Here's your budget. Keep it within that for the quarter. Right. He's got bosses, too. They've got state shareholders and stakeholders in these companies that want to keep margins low. Right. So when you have relationships built up, working with a public adjuster who knows somebody in your insurance company or has relationships with that insurance company can go a long way. Finding an insurance adjuster is really easy. You go online, there's a National association of Public Adjusters, you type in your zip code, and you call through people and, and talk to them about your case. And, and, and if they can help you, if you think it's something that would be a good fit.

There you go, man. This. This has been very informative, I think, I think a lot of people are gonna like this.

I think so, too. Who thought that you get us on. On the, on a recording and then you could talk for insurance for 40 minutes. I don't know.

40 minutes of talking about insurance. Guys, this is.

This is riveting.

But honestly, it, you know, it's. It's good information to have, and if nothing else, save this episode in, like, whatever podcast app you're using and just save it there. Hopefully you never need it, but if you do need it, you have it saved, and you literally have the entire playbook on how to handle insurance. And we're actually thinking about creating this as like, a little product offering even. So we're kind of giving you. Kind of giving it to you now before we do that. So keep that in mind. Get some good info here. Yeah, so. All right, well, I think. I think we're good for. For today on the insurance front. You got anything else you want to add?

The only thing that I will say is when you're, when you're going through this process, always go with your gut. Make sure you're hiring people that you have good relationships with because, you know, it's a stressful thing to go through. And then always, always, always make sure you post test and post verify. You bring in and make sure that everything was done. Don't just leave it off to the, the work that has been done. The people that did the work did the cleanup. If they say it's good, don't trust that you need to bring people in to clear it. Especially when insurance is involved. You want to have a certificate by a third party company stating that the problem has been resolved because God forbid something was missed. And you fast forward six months to a year later and you said that the remediation company said they were done and you chose that remediation company and now you're trying to go back to your insurance company to reopen the claim. Good luck. They're not going to do it. So always, always post test, get that third party verification. Other than that, I think that we've covered it all, Brian.

I like it. All right, so we're going to, we're going to wrap this up. I think we may pop over to the old, the old Instagram for a sec, maybe. But other than that, hope you enjoy this one and we'll talk to you guys again soon.

Thanks, guys.

So that's it for today's show, everyone. Thanks so much for tuning in. If you enjoyed the show, please take a moment and subscribe and give a rating wherever you get your podcasts. It'll help spread the word to those who really needed the most.