If you’re handy or work in the building trades, you may be inclined to complete your own repairs following damage to your home. Before you do, here are a few things you should consider.
THE HOMEOWNER RATE
Your insurance company more than likely utilizes a lower hourly rate when estimating work completed by the homeowner. We see this routinely applied to clean-up and mitigation as well as any demo work completed prior to the contractor's involvement. And on many items, it quite literally cuts the estimated payment in half. If you are set on doing your own repairs, it is sometimes possible to negotiate with your adjuster for you to be paid the contractor rate; Tugboat can help you do that.
RECOVERABLE DEPRECIATION
The second point to consider is depreciation. Assuming your policy is RCV (Replacement Cost Valuation) as most policies are, your insurance company is likely to depreciate everything anyway, even though they owe for full replacement. It’s a little trick called “recoverable depreciation”; in order for you to recover it, you will now have to submit invoices and receipts for everything. Then, after the insurance company looks everything over, if you’ve sufficiently proved that your costs were more than they already paid, they’ll pay up to the total amount that you’ve proven you’ve spent since that’s what they owe you (minus the deductible and any improvements of course).
So if you save a bit of money by doing the work yourself, chances are in the end your insurance company is the only one who will benefit from all your hard work.
HIDDEN COSTS
Finally, consider your time and comfort. Besides the time you’ll spend working to complete the repairs you’ll be scheduling waste disposal, making supply runs, and losing out on sleep or taking time off work to make it all happen. Plus, due to the damages and worksite conditions, you may not be able to use your home comfortably. More often than not, completing the repairs yourself causes this period to drag on much longer than it would if you were to hire a professional.
Whatever you decide, don't add undue stress to your insurance claim. Use Tugboat and navigate your home insurance and any claims like a pro.