What To Do If Your Investment Property Catches Fire?

What is it like to fix a property that caught fire? This article is for informational purposes in case your investment property catches fire. It is great that people can know what to do when these accidents happen and even more when it is from a person who has experience in Real Estate and knows about insurances and legal procedures, and that’s your property manager. They have the knowledge of what to do in certain situations like this one. 

We believe we are not going to be involved in such a difficult situation like a fire. We trust our tenants and we think they would be careful the whole time. Accidents happen all the time and you have to be ready for them. If there’s a fire in your house, your insurance can support you.

When your property burns the first thing you need to do is call your property manager. He or she will go to the place where the accident happened and he’s going to analyze and understand the facts.

Investment property: Importance of the property manager

If you have a property manager when these cases happen, they will take care of everything related to this process. The property manager will get a copy of the fire report from the fire department. Then,  what he does is to call out the insurance company in order to leverage the funding to rebuild the property. You have to do that if you want it rented again. When you reach to the insurance company, this is what they always ask for the first part of the investigation:

  • They’re going to request a copy of the fire report.
  • They will also send their own investigator just to make sure that you’re not trying to do fraud.
  • Then, the process starts and they will take a couple of months to validate everything they have.

There are a lot of people out there who are trying to take advantage of insurance companies. Maybe they want to get the property renovated and bring it up to the latest market standards. Unfortunately, they take extreme measures to get access to this funding.

They need to make sure that the investigation happened and that you are in fact, a legit case and you are not just trying to get insurance money out of the blue. 

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If your investment property catches fire, contact the firefighters’ department

fire report
It is very important that the authorities verify what really happened with the fire on the property.

They will take the responsibility to extinguish the fire. They will make an official fire report and they will give you or your property manager a copy of that report. This report is the one your insurance is going to ask for when you first contact them. It’s mandatory that you show them a copy of the fire report because that’s one of the most important requirements for them to give you back the money to rebuild your house.

If you have other kinds of proof you can also send them for the record. Videospictureseyewitnesses and other similar to that. The insurance will send their own investigator to see what happened: if it was an actual accident or if it was provoked by someone else or some other factor.

They are going to evaluate your case to calculate the size of the damages of your property and that way they will know the amount of money you will need for the renovations. 

Then, all you have to do is wait for them to call you or send you the check. This step takes a couple of months. 

Why do they have to verify if the fire was actually an accident? – Investment Property

It’s very important that authorities verify what truly happened when your house caught fire.

The purpose of the insurance companies is to help us with these kinds of accidents. They have to be our first support when we go through a difficult situation like this.  That’s why every insurance company has their own investigator. They are in charge of confirming that the case is real.

Investment Property: Period without renting

check for fire
The arrival of that check may take time, while the accident is verified and the money is approved.

The insurance company will take around 6 months to process your check. During this process, your property cannot be rented. 

What happened during the 6 month period? The expert investigator was sent to your house to confirm the fire. They will determine if it was a big fire that caused a big or a total damage or if it was a fire with minor consequences. They will measure all the rooms and spaces of your house to identify the damages and calculate the amount of your insurance check.

Then, the insurance company will have to work with several contractors to study the renovations costs. They will do this whole process in the most honest and rightful way.

These are the steps you have to follow in case that your investment property catches fire. No one wishes for anybody to go through a situation like this, but this a guide to know what to do if you face any kind of accident. After receiving your check and making all the renovations to your investment property, there will be a lot of things to do in your real estate business.

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