Family cottage burnt down - need advice

Hi LSO,

Got some unfortunate news that our beloved Muskoka family cottage burnt to the ground yesterday - nothing left...

I'm hoping I can help my parents out in any way possible but have no experience with insurance claims of this magnitude.

Has anyone been through a similar experience? and if so, do you have any tips to share on dealing with insurance companies, maximizing your payout, minimizing timelines, etc?

Some of the bigger questions I have -

-How do we get the process moving as quickly as possible? What's a reasonable timeline to expect?
-Will it make more sense to rebuild and sell a brand new cottage? Or take the payout and sell the lot?
-How do we properly quantify the contents inside the cottage that should be covered (including my fishing gear)?

Obviously there's a lot that goes into answering some of these questions and I don't expect to get all of the answers, but there's a lot of experience on this board that I'm hoping to tap into.

Many thanks in advance for your help,

FF17

Wow that is so sad to hear and unfortunate. Hope you don't get a hard time from Insurance

Any word on what happened?

Was that the one in the picture on Muskoka411
On peninsula road?

First thing to do is read your insurance policy and see values on

structure and contents


always helps to have proof/videos of interior and special items
then talk with your agent/rep


good luck.....I went thru this decades ago and it was not fun.......

If you rebuild, I will be a full year


I wish you all the best

Our best guess at this point is that it was a chimney fire.

My brother was at the cottage but thankfully he made it out safe.

Yes it was

Thank you for the insight.

I'm sure as a family we can come up with lots of pictures from phones, computers etc.

I lost a decent amount of fishing gear also. My two humminbird Helix 5s were in there, along with a number of rods and lots of tackle.

When you went through it did it take a long time/back and forth with insurance before agreeing on a settlement?

Thank you again,

I think it all depends on the insurance company.

Make sure you list everything
Including the fishfinders and the rods.
They were all St.Croix , were they not?

Sorry to hear. Insurance companies sometimes like to drag things out, I know a local business that burnt down and they took almost a year to start rebuilding. I have heard never to take the first offer from them, maybe call an insurance broker and get their advice. Goodluck!

None of the gear was cheap, especially the rods/reels.

I think the Helix 5 is now discontinued too

Man I sure hope it doesn't take that long. Thanks for the advice!

Sorry about your loss.

The first thing to do is to contact your insurance company and/or your insurance agent. If you have no insurance agent, then contact the insurance company directly and start working with them.

If you have an agent, he represents you and contact them first and take their advice in dealing with the insurer.

The following is some advice on what can be a great help if you find yourself in this position in future.

Something that I have done, is take pictures of every room in the house, to show our possessions. The pictures don't have to be fancy, they just need to show everything. Don't forget to do the garage, your boat and all your fishing and hunting gear. Better to have too many pictures than not enough. Download them to the computer, run a CD or memory stick and put that in your safety deposit box at the bank.

Further, anything you have that has a serial number, make a list of the items and serial numbers, print off a copy and put that in the safety deposit box as well.

If you keep the copies in the safety deposit box, they won't get destroyed if your place burns to the ground.

Much easier to deal with an insurer when you have proof of what you had.

Another thing to keep in mind, not all insurers are out to screw you. Three years ago, I hit a deer with my SUV while we were on vacation in Nova Scotia. While I was dealing directly with the Insurer as the policy was through an Association program, the insurer could not have been more helpful or co-operative. I came away quite impressed.

SDC

So sorry to hear.

Also note on you policy some policies are written so that you have to rebuild. This was such the case in Halliburton when a place down the road from me burn down.

Hi FF17, sorry about your loss.

About 10 years ago I had a pretty bad grease fire. Fortunately my home did not burn down, but we had about $15K in damage.

We called the insurance company ASAP. The fire department was still on scene. The Fire Marshall was a huge help. I handed him the phone and he was very prompt with the Claims Agent. Next day we had a rep come out to asses the damage.

I would contact your insurance provider ASAP. They will definitely want to hear from the officials (assuming there were officials involved) as they will conduct their investigation to make sure it was actually an accident.

Best of luck,

GRW

Sorry to hear about your loss. Thankfully no one was hurt.

I had to do a claim for a pretty large home robbery last year.

First thing to remember about contents is that it's replacement cost not what it was worth in it's devalued form. For instance, it's not what the Helix 5 was worth it's what the equal finder would cost to buy today.

In our case which was much smaller than yours we literally went to stores and bought the replacement items. the receipts were then submitted to the insurance company.

I cannot really comment on the structure. However, my experience has been that just be very buttoned down and straight forward with the insurance. Definitely do not sign off on anything until you are satisfied with the reimbursement.

The last piece of advice is prepare yourself for a lot of work. Just because insurance is covering the cost you are still managing the building of a cottage.