Severe Weather (Dallas, Austin, Fort Worth: house, to buy, tornadoes)

[momof2dfw]

Do NOT call your insurance company to make a claim or to even have them come out and check. That will put a blackmark on your record. If you have a reputable roofing company to call and have come out and check for damamge first do that. If not, find one. Calling the ins. co. just to come check a claim gets made and if you ever want to change companies you can not till that claim is 3 years old. You are allowed 1 natural and 1 "man made" claim in a 3 year period.

If you DO need a roof, DO NOT GET IT PUT ON NOW!!!!!!!!!! Wait till the summer once the threat of hail is over for this season. They only way I'd get a new one now is if I had leaks.

[01Snake]

Originally Posted by momof2dfw

Do NOT call your insurance company to make a claim or to even have them come out and check. That will put a blackmark on your record. If you have a reputable roofing company to call and have come out and check for damamge first do that. If not, find one. Calling the ins. co. just to come check a claim gets made and if you ever want to change companies you can not till that claim is 3 years old. You are allowed 1 natural and 1 "man made" claim in a 3 year period.

If you DO need a roof, DO NOT GET IT PUT ON NOW!!!!!!!!!! Wait till the summer once the threat of hail is over for this season. They only way I'd get a new one now is if I had leaks.

Excellent advice. Property insurance does not work like auto insurance does. With an auto claim, you can simply cancel a claim once its started and it disappears from your records. Not so with a property claim. Once a claim is setup, its on your record even if nothing is paid.

Can anyone tell me about the extent of the damage up in Dallas and Ft. Worth? Was this a citywide hailstorm or are we just talking about small pockets of hail that effected a few parts of the city(s)?

Thanks!

[loves2read]

don't know if these will post
show hail in front and back yard in Bedford
there was swath of hail storms all across Metroplex--almost all areas got some hail--some worse and bigger than others...

well, guess they didn't show...

[Guingirl]

The hail was pretty widespread throughout the Metroplex with it being bigger in some areas than others. In Saginaw, we got golf ball sized hail.

Thanks Mom for the great advice!

[Synopsis]

Originally Posted by momof2dfw

Do NOT call your insurance company to make a claim or to even have them come out and check. That will put a blackmark on your record. If you have a reputable roofing company to call and have come out and check for damamge first do that. If not, find one. Calling the ins. co. just to come check a claim gets made and if you ever want to change companies you can not till that claim is 3 years old. You are allowed 1 natural and 1 "man made" claim in a 3 year period.

If you DO need a roof, DO NOT GET IT PUT ON NOW!!!!!!!!!! Wait till the summer once the threat of hail is over for this season. They only way I'd get a new one now is if I had leaks.

Thanks for the great advice. I'm wondering if we'll need a new roof. There's no real serious damage but it probably needs it from the pounding it took and the age of the roof. I'll strongly consider your advice.

[momof2dfw]

Originally Posted by Synopsis

Thanks for the great advice. I'm wondering if we'll need a new roof. There's no real serious damage but it probably needs it from the pounding it took and the age of the roof. I'll strongly consider your advice.

You would be surprised at the amount of hail a good roof can take. The only time we had to have one replaced because of hail was the one about 4 years ago that was so not normal. Most hailstones are round or at least somewhat "smooth". These were not. They were HUGE, 3-4" in dia. or length as they were not all round at all and jagged. It ripped everything to shreds and I mean everyones fences got beaten and pockmarked, patio furniture was torn to shreds, the tarps on the kids forts were shreds, etc. It was not isolated either and we not only got it once but twice. The first time it came in from one direction and then the second wave about 20 minutes later came from another direction so it got cars on both sides. It was bad. It was bad enough that most of the major ins. companies had their disaster teams come in to handle all of the claims and they were here for several weeks. Another neighbor that had State Farm also was told by the adjusters that our roof got the worst of it in our neighborhood for the S.F. claims. great

We got another hail storm three years ago and only had a 1 year old roof after getting it replaced the fall before. Because some neighbors did have some damage I went ahead and called our agent just to have them come check to make sure it was okay and even told them I did not think we had hail large enough for very long. I was right and our roof was fine. Well it was all okay till they started jacking our rates up and we wanted to change. We had to wait until that was off our "record" for 3 years so that we could change. All claims are submitted to a database and every insurance company has access to it. This is also when we found out that your are allowed 1 "man made" claim (plumbing leak, etc) and 1 "natural" claim (hail and such) in a 3 year period. YIKES!!! In other words you HAVE to have insurance but you are never allowed to claim it. lol. This is the only time we have ever changed insurance companies in our years of marriage/homeownership and even before that we both had the same carrier.


As for the hail from this last storm. We only had a small bit of hail over here in northeast Garland. It was about pea to marble size and only lasted maybe a minute yet even during that it was not a lot coming down. Very brief.

As for getting a roof if you need one. If you don't have any leaks then wait out the spring and summer. You REALLY do not want to put on a new roof right now if you can hold off and only to have to call to make another claim if you should get hit again w/ severe hail damage. If your gutters, window frames, etc got damage they will include that and if you don't have it fixed they will know and the next time you will not get paid for it. I was also told that you don't want the roof put on during the summer and for the life of me the reason totally escapes me now. It has to do with the heat and the materials if the summer is really hot. We waited till the fall and had ours replaced. OH! And if you DO need a new roof and you do not make a claim and you go to sell in the next few years the buyers inspector should be able to spot roof damage and then you will have to make a claim and get a new roof based on that hail storm back in "year". You would be surprised at the number of times that happens. If you have a roofing company come out and you have minor damage get them to give you an estimate. Check that with your deductible and you may be better off just not even turning in a claim. With the deductibles now 1% of the homes value if you have a $300K house and your damage is under $3K or even a little over you are better off paying for it out of pocket and not making a claim. Save the claims for the really big stuff if you ever should need it.

[Synopsis]

Thanks for the advice momof2. So you can really make a claim xx months after the fact? There's no limit on the time for you to turn in a claim? So this fall, I could perhaps call my insurance company and say "We suspect a damaged roof from the storm on April 13th?"

Thanks again for the advice. Good stuff.

[momof2dfw]

Originally Posted by Synopsis

Thanks for the advice momof2. So you can really make a claim xx months after the fact? There's no limit on the time for you to turn in a claim? So this fall, I could perhaps call my insurance company and say "We suspect a damaged roof from the storm on April 13th?"

Thanks again for the advice. Good stuff.

Yes, you can call later and turn it in. But if you DO have damage and know that it is well over your deductible you may want to go ahead and claim it as it will be much easier now. More than likely the insurance companies (the majors at least) have brought in their disaster teams to handle all of the storm related claims while their adjusters here stay w/ their normal claims. The disaster teams come out and canvass an area and are at the ready to write the checks sometimes along w/ having accurate costs availabe. They already know the storm came thru and the amount of damage it has caused. If you wait too long they have to go back and verify that indeed a storm came thru on x date and x number of people in your area did indeed have damage/claims identical to yours. You are more likely to get things covered that you had no idea were even damaged now than if you wait. If you do have a damaged roof and make the claim, get the money and do not replace the roof if another storm comes thru and you call to make a claim they will be able to tell if you replaced your roof or not w/ your last claim. If you have not they will NOT cover any damage at all. If you go to sell the house and the buyers inspector determines that there is indeed roof damage and it must be replaced per their lender you will have to pay for it. If no claim was made you can then. If you did make a claim and received the funds to replace it but did not........... not good. OUCH! That will hurt if you spent the money on other things and don't have the funds to do such now. Another thing is if you have a mortgage you are required to have these things fixed and the insurance company could make the check payable to you AND the mortgage company. If your market value is much higher than your loan amount they may not put the mortgage company on the check.

When we had the big roof claim a couple of years ago the insurance company paid for new gutters and downspouts as they did get some pings. Since you can only see them w/ a very detailed eye and they still work properly we did not replace those. This hail also damaged all of the trim around the windows. Bad enough on some that we did replace but on others not at all. If another storm comes thru and they come out and determine that our gutters were damaged previously and we did not use the ins. money to repair/replace they won't give us a dime for it. On your wooden fences, we were the ONLY person in our neighborhood that got insurance money on that and it was because our fence is the hardyboard planks (like siding that looks like wood) and was stained. If you have just the regular wooden fence w/ no stain it does not count. Now remember if you DO make a claim and they DO pay out and you go to change insurance companies they will want proof that the repairs were made. You can either have an inspector come out to verify (about $100) or provide all receipts from the contractors.

Can ya tell I've had to deal with this

As for those that wait too long to call that only make the claim when they sell........... they are NOT happy campers and a lot of times it turns the buyers off. What else went wrong w/ this house that the sellers have neglected? It can really throw a wrench in the deal.

[Synopsis]

As always, your posts are very informative and MUCH appreciated momof2! I am taking this all to heart and using it to make an informed decision as to what I have done. Thanks!

[catman]

I live about two miles from Trinity Park, where the infamous Mayfest hailstorm occured in 1995. I saw softball-sized hail in my yard, and some of it went all the way through the roof and was landing on top of the ceilings!

Fortunately, it doesn't happen often. Parts of Ft Worth were hit hard about eight days ago with 3" hail, and four tornadoes were spotted, one of which did a lot of damage in NE Ft Worth (Haltom City), but at my house, all I got was rain. Luck of the draw.