The Nightmare After Christmas: Burst Pipes & Big Claims

On this episode of Bank Chats, our guest, Matt Noel, walks us through a Christmas pipe burst that dumped 12,000 gallons through a house and turned a finished move-in home into a six-month rebuild. We talk candidly about what a homeowner's insurance claim really demands from you, what gets reimbursed, and why good coverage and good people matter when everything is soaked.

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Credits:
An AmeriServ Financial, Inc. Production
Music by SchneckMind
Hosted by Drew Thomas and Jeff Matevish

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This podcast focuses on having valuable conversations on various topics related to banking and financial health. The podcast is grounded in having open conversations with professionals and experts, with the goal of helping to take some of the mystery out of financial and related topics; as learning about financial products and services can help you make more informed financial decisions. Please keep in mind that the information contained within this podcast, and any resources available for download from our website or other resources relating to Bank Chats is not intended, and should not be understood or interpreted to be, financial advice. The hosts, guests, and production staff of Bank Chats expressly recommend that you seek advice from a trusted financial professional before making financial decisions. The hosts of Bank Chats are not attorneys, accountants, or financial advisors, and the program is simply intended as one source of information. The podcast is not a substitute for a financial professional who is aware of the facts and circumstances of your individual situation. AmeriServ Presents: Bank Chats is produced and distributed by AmeriServ Financial, Incorporated. 

Transcript

Drew Thomas: 0:05

Fast fact, the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 had a profound impact on the home insurance industry. Despite less than 50% of the fire's damage being insured, many companies still chose to honor the policies playing a vital role in Chicago's recovery. I'm Drew Thomas, and this is Bank Chats. And so, oh, no, that's, that's all put in post, yeah. So, we don't, we don't actually listen to them. For those of you that are listening right now, as we're talking about this, we don't actually listen to the theme song or anything. We're tired of it, right?

Jeff Matevish: 1:10

I listen to it. I edit it. That's true. You do it every single time, yeah.

Drew Thomas: 1:14

And you love it.

Jeff Matevish: 1:15

I do.

Matt Noel: 1:16

Snap along with it or anything?

Jeff Matevish: 1:20

So, we are, we're going to have, we're going to have a very sort of interesting discussion today, something different than what I think we've done in the past. We, we bring experts on the show all the time.

Matt Noel: 1:31

Now we have a complete amateur, who knows nothing.

Drew Thomas: 1:36

And now we, now I wouldn't call you, I wouldn't call you a complete amateur, but you we're looking at something from, from the side of the perspective that we typically don't, we're always looking at it from the bank perspective, or from the, you know, not from the, the perspective of the people going through it.

Jeff Matevish: 1:49

Real world experience side.

Drew Thomas: 1:51

Yes, yes, right. So, we are going to talk, I'm going to let you introduce yourself. So, this is, this is Matthew.

Matt Noel: 1:57

Matthew Noel.

Drew Thomas: 1:58

Matthew, we're going to put a big light bulb above your head, and...

Matt Noel: 2:03

I get a lower third on me?

Drew Thomas: 2:05

We can probably do that if it makes you feel...

Matt Noel: 2:08

Really I'm demanding a lower third.

Jeff Matevish: 2:15

This is going to be a fun one. Yeah.

Drew Thomas: 2:18

So, Matt is here to talk to us a little bit about some personal experience he had on dealing with homeowner's insurance. And this is something that we've never really talked about on the show, because it's, it's every, every situation is different, obviously, and we're going to give you one example of what it's like to deal with a homeowner's insurance claim, but we want you to tell your story. We're just going to kind of talk through it. We're going to probably pepper you with questions throughout, but we'll let you get started on telling us.

Matt Noel: 2:48

Good, it will be really boring if you just let me tell a story for 45 minutes.

Drew Thomas: 2:52

I know. No, we've been there, yeah. So, go ahead. So, tell us, so you, I'll let you decide where you want to start this story, but basically, you experienced an issue with a home that you were not yet occupying, correct?

Matt Noel: 3:09

We were in, but not like. So, we bought a house and it needed a lot of work, and so we were working on it basically, you know, I was putting in a new hardwood floor, so we had stuff there we were, we would stay there. And so we were sort of there and, and at the other house, because we still had a lot of our stuff there, it was a weird situation. And we, and they were only, you know, you could get from one to the other in a minute. You know, it wasn't like we didn't spend a lot of time at both places, but that's a weird setup, because, you know, it just is, you know, and on, on top of it, so the thing that we're talking about that we had a water pipe burst, basically, and to add to it is the fact that it happened on Christmas Day.

Jeff Matevish: 3:55

Merry Christmas to you.

Matt Noel: 3:56

Yeah. So, we weren't even there at all. We were at my parents' house basically the entire day, and by the time it was all said and done, we're like, oh, we'll just go back to the old house. And, you know, just we didn't get much thought to it. It was just like, it's Christmas Day. Everyone, sure, great day, but everyone's tired afterwards. So, we rolled into the old place, and then my dad had given us a one of those heaters, like the upright propane things that you might have on the porch or whatever.

Drew Thomas: 4:25

Oh, like they put like, on, like a patio.

Matt Noel: 4:29

He had one. He has a, like, a cabana behind their house, and so he has a couple of those heaters or one. It doesn't matter, but it's so really.

Drew Thomas: 4:36

No, no, I want to know exactly how many heaters he has.

Matt Noel: 4:38

3.4 heaters. I don't know how we got the point four. There's one, anyway, if you want...

Drew Thomas: 4:44

The average American family now, right?

Matt Noel: 4:48

Average American family has one heater. But anyway, so we, he had given us that because he liked his on his anyway, it doesn't again, it doesn't matter for this story. But he, the next morning, was like, hey, don't bother taking that home. I'll just load it in the car and I'll take it over to the new place. We have a nice outdoor porch there, and we, you know, that was going to be kind of a thing that we use there. And I get a call from him, and he's like, hey, my brother had gone with him. He's like, Matt, think you want to come over here right now. It's like, okay. He's like, yeah, there's some leaking. He didn't really give me an understanding of the extent of the leaking. He just said, you know, there's some water coming.

Jeff Matevish: 5:28

It's pretty bad when you can see the leak from outside your house.

Matt Noel: 5:30

Well, they had actually gone in, okay. So, they did have a way to go in. Yeah, everything. And he had gone in because he just thought, well, they weren't here last night. And it was, it was, was it 2022? Where we just had, I mean, the mall had a pipe burst. The Richland school district had a pipe.

Drew Thomas: 5:47

Oh, yeah, there have been some really cold winters around here.

Matt Noel: 5:50

The cold Christmas that, like a bunch of businesses, had this type of damage, got you, in this area. And so he just thought, well, go walk around the house, see what Matt's been working on, because we were fixing it up still, you know. And we wanted to see kind of where we were with it. And, yeah, they went in and, and again, nothing could have really prepared me for the amount that we were talking about here.

Drew Thomas: 6:13

Yeah, when you, when someone calls you and says that you have a leak at your house, like you're imagining like the water under the sink is leaking out, or something like that.

Matt Noel: 6:22

You know, one floor maybe, or one room, or whatever else, you know. But he kind of gave me the, you know, the Star Trek thing of Captain, you better get down here right now. Just tell me, what the thing, damage. Yeah, I don't need to come. Just tell me.

Drew Thomas: 6:37

So, I don't make me run to engineering, you know.

Matt Noel: 6:41

So, I drove over there, and, yeah, it was. It was about as bad as you could expect. So, what had happened is the house itself, I mean, just looking back in retrospect, I was told the House had that part of the house had almost been rebuilt more than once by the previous owners.

Drew Thomas: 6:59

And this house isn't really all that old, really, at this point, 1990 Yeah. So, I mean, now to me, 1990 was yesterday, but still, it's not that old, you know, 1990.

Matt Noel: 7:08

Not that old, you know, but sort of in that weird spot where it's like between old style construction and modern construction. Like, it's not an airtight house like you would expect out of a modern house, you know. So, the area that it was in, clearly was under insulated, and, I mean, and thankfully, in this process, as you'll find out, we've gotten a chance to fix up a lot of the things in there. But so what had happened is, just in the, in the over the dining room the house, there was some water pipes that had come down, I think, from the bathroom down, and then across the front of the house, and the area that they were in the front of the house, just there was a breeze there. Like once we sort of had it opened up, you literally could feel a breeze. So, somewhere air was coming in, and it was just going right over these pipes and, and it was the very front of the house, which you're not really supposed to have, at least, as I understand, you don't want really have pipes on your exterior walls to begin with. So, sort of a bad design, you know, anyway, neither here nor there. But because of that, both the hot and the cold pipe that were up there, which they're only like, you know, the normal half inch pipes, right, right, had both frozen, you know. And I was shocked that the hot froze even. But they both froze. They both burst. And we later found out that it had put 12,000 gallons of water through our dining room. Now remind you, this is all in the ceiling of the dining room, so it flowed across the ceiling, and it ended up getting into the living room and the kitchen as well. Now the, the layout of the house is like the dining rooms on the corner, and then sort of it spans the whole side of the house. And then the living room came off that came off that, and the kitchen was sort of like a galley style kitchen, not a huge kitchen or anything, but old, like 1990s but custom made cabinetry, cabinetry on everything so aged, but nice, you know, and so, yeah. So, when I got there, basically the entire roof of the dining room had caved in and, and it was still, you know, dripping and everything else. And, of course, my dad turned off the, the main downstairs. I told him where to find it and everything.

Drew Thomas: 9:23

That was nice of him.

Jeff Matevish: 9:25

12,000 gallons, a little too late.

Drew Thomas: 9:28

At least he didn't just walk out of the house and was like, all right.

Jeff Matevish: 9:33

Some people would panic and say, I don't know what to do, I don't know what to do. Yeah, yeah. It's possible.

Matt Noel: 9:37

It was really weird, though, because, you know, it's like, it's like, because it was also the hot water. It had that weird, like, it was like walking into a swimming pool in a hotel, you know that smell. It had that, like.

Drew Thomas: 9:49

Just, just minus the chlorine, yeah.

Jeff Matevish: 9:51

But it had comfortable disaster.

Matt Noel: 9:53

Yeah, very strange. And so it, the initial thing, obviously, you saw the floor was wet. And you saw that the ceiling was no longer there, not completely, but mostly no longer there. And, you know, of course, it was in pieces, and some stuff was still hanging down, insulation everywhere, you know, all those types of things. So, we didn't really have an understanding of the extent of the damage at that point, but obviously it was sort of where it was. Now, I had just finished the floor in the living room. You just maple, or maple hardwood, and we had to do something. We actually had to replace the sub floors as well, because they, the old sub floors were just they weren't, I don't know if they were up to code in 1990 or not, but they weren't good. And they were like, like, you know, you're supposed to have three quarter inch ply with tongue and groove, and it's glued and nailed and, like, it was none of that. It was like, half inch ply. You could see the joists underneath it. So, we're like, all right, here's, I mean, then this was the challenge of this house. As we were fixing things, we realized, oh, you know, we'd pull up a carpet and be like, all right, we're not just replacing the carpet, because it's only got fiber board. So, we'll pull up the fiber board. You don't want to put hardwood into fiber boards, so we rip that. Oh my gosh. Now you can see the sub floor, and it's all wavy, and it's obviously not up to par.

Drew Thomas: 11:12

So, this is definitely something that I think most homeowners can relate to, honestly, which is, when you start a project, if you're and DIY is a big thing right now. I mean, everybody watches HGTV, and they think that they can, you know, remodel an entire kitchen inside of an hour or two. But most homeowners know that when you start a project, whatever you think you're getting yourself into, it's going to be more than that. Yeah, it just, it just is, you know, and

Matt Noel: 11:41

I'm going to get somebody to come in and help with this. And so, you know, I had a good crew come in. They would not, not, not a huge crew or anything, but I have a good crew come in, and they had done the sub floors and stuff. But, yeah. I mean it, that's exact thing, though, every time like I my, my mindset is, let me see if I can do this. Sure. Yeah, I can tear up a carpet as well as anybody. I can pull up old hardwood, even, you know, so we get underneath, and then we kind of see, okay, actually, I'm going to need some help on this.

Jeff Matevish: 12:17

And there's nothing that, like an inspector or anything would have known prior to this thing.

Matt Noel: 12:21

I mean, you wouldn't be able to look at it from at it from underneath exactly what was trying subfloor and everything else, then once you get into it, yeah. So, so all that to say we had done all that. And unfortunately, the saddest part of it is, is the dining room was my favorite room in the house, because the people who sold us the house, lovely, lovely people, but they every room was in business for itself. You know, the whole house, like, each and every room was like a whole new environment, separate from every other room in the house. The nature of it like, so our living room had, like, oak squares and rectangles on the walls. They didn't frame anything. They were just kind of a design, yeah, fine, you know.

Drew Thomas: 13:04

But the so every room, but that design was never repeated in any other area of the house.

Jeff Matevish: 13:09

Every room had its own theme.

Matt Noel: 13:10

Yes, it was like a, like a theme hotel, every room was on its own. So, the dining room, though, had like, I guess you call it wainscoting, or chair rail or whatever. But it had, like, oak on one of the wall. The floor was a nice, darker oak and everything. And it was like, I don't want to touch this room. This is nice. It knew what it wanted to be. It had like, you know, kind of the classic doors that would go two-way doors, I guess you'd call them, or what.

Drew Thomas: 13:40

Like the bar doors, like the old saloon bars, you know.

Jeff Matevish: 13:44

The French door type.

Matt Noel: 13:45

The one door and everything. So, it closed off the dining room.

Drew Thomas: 13:48

And it creaked.

Matt Noel: 13:49

It was every time you walked in, somebody looked up so but the dining room was...

Drew Thomas: 13:58

An upright piano plays in the distance, you know. All right, sorry, I'm done.

Matt Noel: 14:03

But the dining room was nice, and it was, it was the one that it was like, it had the most cohesive nature of all the rooms in the house. So, we were like, I'm not touching this. This is nice. Now it had some weird stuff, like the floor because of the way we had replaced sub floor and the new floor. I don't know if, I don't remember if it was like, right on the studs, or if it must have been still on a subfloor, but it was a shorter subfloor than, the than this, the floor we had put in because we did, like, I can't think of what you call but good tongue, tongue and groove, three quarter inch, you know. So, when we AdvanTech, that's what it's called, if you want to plug for regardless, very, very standard, though, type of sub floor, yeah, you know, so because of that, like the floors were off a little bit everything else and really deal with transitions and stuff. But it was great. It was a nice room that was gone. I did not plan to replace this room. But, yeah, God had better ideas. God and the freeze up of that day.

Drew Thomas: 15:05

So, so okay, so let's talk a little bit about because obviously, I mean, this is a nightmare, right? It's the day after Christmas, basically.

Matt Noel: 15:14

I'm not much of a person for swearing, but I invented some new words.

Drew Thomas: 15:20

So, so, so this is the day after Christmas, or whatever, and you're, you're dealing, you're seeing this, you don't what's obviously your, your first thought, or, or one of your first thoughts must have been something along the lines of, thank goodness I have insurance or something that I can say. But who do you call? Like, what do, how do you file a claim?

Matt Noel: 15:38

Yeah, well, I mean, so the good thing. So, we had purchased our insurance through a broker, and so the very first thing I did was contact the broker. Now it's, it's Christmas, so, you know, we it wasn't like it was going to be, I didn't expect anything to be instant, obviously, yeah, and, you know, he kind of gave me the pertinent information. Now, the thing is, the broker really isn't the person you talk to, to make anything happen with a claim, so it was ultimately came talking to the insurance company directly. So, but it was still nice to have somebody who kind of, hey, here's who you talk to, or whatever else. And we had all that information. So it was sort of a repeat of stuff we had, but still going through a broker was nice because we just Yeah, it was like we had somebody in our corner a little bit to kind of deal with some of that. And he did. He made some phone calls here and there to try and advocate for us and stuff, which was, which was cool. I don't know if that's a normal role that a broker has in our case we got, I would like to,

Drew Thomas: 16:35

I'd like to think so.

Matt Noel: 16:37

I mean, that's where, like, this is my one, like, I've had insurance on cars and houses and everything. I've never used it, not once, not on a car, not on a house. That's not true. I did have one car I had to use it on. But even that was somebody. It was my wife, came back to where her car was parked, and it wasn't there. Ah, so and what had happened is, while she was parked, she was in Bedford, she was doing this thing in the woods with, with a student who was surveying a certain area, and she was out in the woods, and she got back and but her car had been pushed down over the hill by somebody who basically was driving. And they like, went to, like, they dropped their phone, and they like, reached down so they didn't break one bit. The car was just gone. So, and Rayna got there and, and my wife, Rayna, and she, she's like, she called me. She's somebody stole my car. And I was like, well, go talk to the police. And she got to the police, and they're like, are you looking for a car? She's like, yes. Like, we know where it is.

Jeff Matevish: 17:34

Well, at least they tattled on themselves, yeah.

Matt Noel: 17:37

So, there's no question once she actually talked to the police, yeah. But anyway, so with them, you know, again, similar situation, actually, same broker group, yeah, yeah. So, I will, so, I mean, I'll give a plug in that, at least to me, going through a broker has been a positive experience as a general rule, because they helped us with the car. There was even a point where it's like, ah, you know, we're not getting, I don't feel like we're getting quite enough money on that. So, they're like, whoa, well, we can try and do this or that. So, they finagle a little.

Jeff Matevish: 18:05

Usually get a pretty, you know, a little bit of a discount, at least too.

Matt Noel: 18:08

Yeah, absolutely. So, I mean, but again, just kind of working with them, even though we had to, you know, ultimately it's the insurance company is going to pay out, but having the broker kind of in your corner can be a good thing. So, so I've liked that, and even since then, we've gone with, with a broker, as a common rule. So, anyway, contacted the insurance company and, and truthfully, like this is now a few years ago, so I don't quite remember how all the conversations went. I knew, you know, part of it was going to be that we were going to have to mitigate what was there, you know? So, we talked to a local company, and there's a lot of different...

Drew Thomas: 18:48

So, in other words, clean up the mess, get, you know, get things sort of under control.

Jeff Matevish: 18:53

Basically, take inventory of what was destroyed, pictures, all that kind of stuff too.

Matt Noel: 18:57

Yeah, absolutely, yeah. And, and then we were going to have, and then an adjuster was going to come out and do pictures and stuff like you mentioned. And you know, it was a lot of back and forth, and it ended up taking definitely a few months by the time it was sort of all said and done.

Drew Thomas: 19:13

Now, is that, is that typical? Because if you said that you were not, you were sort of bridging your time, you were sort of partially living in that house and partially living in your old house. But not everybody has a second house that they can stay in while they're, you know, getting this taken care of. So, what would an insurance company do if you didn't have, like, would they put you up in a hotel or something?

Matt Noel: 19:33

To my knowledge, like just talking with them about it, you know, they we were sort of like, well, we have our other house that we're kind of still have, we're getting, you know, and they're like, okay, well, if you could say there, that's great, but yeah, they would have potentially, like, handled putting you up in a hotel or putting you up in some kind of kind of temporary situation, yeah.

Jeff Matevish: 19:51

But check with your, your policyholder first, because they yeah, yeah, because that's not always the case. It has to be written into your policy.

Matt Noel: 19:58

Yeah, we were, I mean, and to be fair, you know, that was one of the things that I've always sort of gone, I've never gone bare minimum on policies. Like, it does cost a little bit more, but like, we get full tort on our, on our auto, we get, like, little, little bit extra, I'm not crazy, I don't need, you know, but just that little bit extra to make sure, like, if this happens, we're covered, you know, at least we'll get a rental at least, we get a place to stay. At least we get whatever, you know. And again, we were incredibly lucky that we were still in this situation where, okay, we have a house, so we're going to go and live there and just kind of continue doing what we're doing.

Drew Thomas: 20:32

Yeah, the funny thing was, I looked up a statistic on this and they said that 63% of policyholders who have homeowners insurance are essentially under insured, like they don't have adequate coverage to cover their house. And there's a number of reasons why that could happen. Either you've added on to the house and you didn't bother to tell your insurance company, you built something, you built a shed, or like a mother-in-law suite, or something on or something, and all of a sudden, now your house is actually worth more than what you initially insured it for. But it struck me that, seriously, like two thirds of people are underinsured, which is crazy.

Matt Noel: 21:11

I mean, and that was the stress of the situation, is like, are we going to be covered by this? Is it, and insurance companies can be a little bit weird about things like, you know, a freeze up, and things like, yeah, like, there's certain, you know. And again, you have to check your policy. So, it's almost dumb luck that our policy happened to include all the things that it did. And again, having a good broker who is in your corner who wanted to set us up with the right policy for what we're doing. And again, we were in a weird situation. And I don't know there are some insurance companies that they could have said, actually, because you kind of have this weird dual house situation, it's not your primary residence, yeah, we're not going to, actually cover you the way that we and I will, to their credit, the insurance company took good care of us. They didn't fight us on anything like they, it was, and I can get into some of the details on it did get a little bit weird for a while because of other circumstances, but, but again, I mean, even the little bit of pushback that they gave us, like they were a very good company, you know, again, through this broker, they have a whole variety of companies, so it wasn't like a national, like a super national company that we ended up getting our insurance through, and that was fine, because, again, you know, they took good care of us. And it seemed like, thankfully, our broker was one who, you know, wasn't just looking for the cheapest policy. They were looking for a good policy. Yeah, that, that happened to be as cheap as you could.

Jeff Matevish: 22:30

And you're probably a long-term customer too. So, yeah, that helps a little bit.

Matt Noel: 22:34

I mean, we had been with them since probably, I mean, I had an auto insurance before I ever owned a house through them, so sure, and my parents were through them and everything else. So, yeah, so they did, they did good on all that. What happened, though, what, what was crazy about it? So, we initially thought, okay, the dining room, that's all that really, you know, the water hit the dining room, but, you know, on further looking at it, it hit the dining room. But, you know, it has to go somewhere, you know, so it, the saddest thing for me was the week-old floor, the new hardwood floor in the living room was all, like, curled up and stuff, you know, it was good hardwood too. Wasn't just cheap in it, but, like, all the wood was like, buckled, warped and yeah, yeah, it was, it was so sad. And again, if it had been, you know, a year old, it would have bothered me a lot less, but it was a week old. I'd barely even gotten to walk on it.

Drew Thomas: 23:25

It's kind of like whenever you buy a new car and you park, yeah, at the other end of the parking lot to try to avoid anybody scratching it or something, and then somebody invariably decides that they need to park right next to you and open their door into the side of yours.

Matt Noel: 23:39

The Runaway shopping cart just finds that car.

Drew Thomas: 23:44

Being blown by the wind directly into the side of

Matt Noel: 23:46

Yeah, that was, that was the situation. And then, and then, so the mitigation company, and I'm not going to, you know, you said, you know, won't name any names or anything.

Drew Thomas: 23:58

Yeah, we're not trying. I mean, we're not trying to throw anybody under a bus, per se, but right, yeah.

Matt Noel: 24:03

So, my plug on that is, you know, check your mitigation company, make sure that they have good ratings and everything else. And ours did, but they, you know, we had the sort of crack squad of teenagers come in to do some literally everything, you know, and so initially, so just talking with the insurance company, initially, we thought, okay, they're going to have to do some cleanup in, like the kitchen so and again, it was in the ceiling, so it kind of spread in the ceiling, and then went down the walls, inside the walls and stuff, and it all went to the basement, so to roll back for a second. So, the dining room, we knew was going to need to be done. The living room, obviously, some stuff is going to need to be done. The floor was, again, I mean, it spread on the floor pretty, pretty well. And then I thought, the kitchen's not bad. And they actually were the, that's where the insurance company was like, the kitchen's fine, you know? And they brought in a guy who had a little moisture meter, and he's checking stuff, and he's like, okay, this wall is good. This wall is good, you know. And went around all over the place. And they, they did that in, like, all the rooms and everything. Obviously, the water emptied out through the basement. And unfortunately, so, you know, if there's 12,000 gallons, 11,000 of them went through our ductwork, in through the air handler in the basement, so that was destroyed, so.

Drew Thomas: 25:20

Through the HVAC system, yeah, oh, my Gosh.

Matt Noel: 25:24

Luckily it didn't touch the furnace. And the, the drainage in the basement was outstanding, like it, it really didn't go far and wide in the basement itself. But, you know, so. So, the kitchen, though, was the, was the questionable area, and it really looked like what they were going to do was probably tear down some of the walls, certainly the some of the ceiling, and then patch what they could. But to do all that because it was the wall that connected, and again, like it was a galley kitchen, but it had stuff up against the wall that was connected to the dining room, so they were going to take down the shelves and probably do some stuff on that wall. And what they do is they like, they dry everything out. Obviously, if it's salvageable, they will, they will do so. They have, like a spray. This was an add on that I think we paid for, but there was, like a spray to prevent mold, buildup and stuff. And I was like, yeah, let's do that. The walls are I don't ever want to open these walls again, sure, right? So, they cut the lower third of the living room wall out, obviously the floor, and then the kitchen. So, I keep rolling back to the kitchen.

Drew Thomas: 26:37

I have that same problem.

Jeff Matevish: 26:40

Your second favorite room, right?

Matt Noel: 26:42

So, they were taking it apart, and I worked from home, so I happened to be in my office, which I had put at that house early on, like, since we owned the house, I'm like, this will be my new office, you know. And, and I hear them, you know, they're there, sort of taking things apart. And the very first thing I hear is a huge crash. And so what, what they had done is that it was, do you remember the Seinfeld episode where he gets a new kitchen? No, the very first thing is they have this one set of shells right in the front where he's, like, looking under it the entire time. We had that, we had, like the kitchen of the 1990s and I had always said, oh, you know, if we could take this down, that might be nice. Yeah, right, that was the first thing they took down. They did not know what all bolts were holding it to the ceiling.

Drew Thomas: 27:32

So, it really wasn't supposed to come down.

Matt Noel: 27:34

Well, it was not supposed to come down in the order that they took it down.

Jeff Matevish: 27:39

More elegant.

Drew Thomas: 27:41

It came down with the speed.

Matt Noel: 27:42

With some speed. And so the very first thing I heard, is just this massive crash. And I walked out and they had basically somebody had removed enough bolts that there was no longer enough support, but not enough bolts to actually remove it carefully. So, the whole thing, it just crashed down. The Oak was destroyed. The countertop was messed up. So, the idea was to try to save the kitchen. But sort of the first thing that happened is the kitchen was destroyed outside of the flooding. And, you know, and again, to their credit, the insurance company, like I don't, I don't know if anything happened after the fact with...

Drew Thomas: 28:16

So, did the, so you found the mitigation company. They didn't find them for you? So, that wasn't their people, no. So, the fact that you found them, then they still did this, it was they still took care of.

Matt Noel: 28:30

It was still coordinated through them. So, I sort of said, hey, I'm talking to such and such an organization to do the mitigation. They also do plumbing work and stuff. And I want, I mean, first thing, first, we had to get the pipe sealed back up. Yeah, didn't have, you know, so, but they were fine with that. Like, everything was coordinated through them. So, if the insurance had said, no, you can't use them, of course, we wouldn't have done so. But they were fine with it, you know.

Jeff Matevish: 28:55

Because do they give you like, a, like, a checklist of things you have to go through? Like, I mean, I know you would know that you had to have, you know, someone do the cleanup, but.

Matt Noel: 29:05

They do, so that's the interesting thing they did, and they, but it was interesting how much of it was like, obviously, they, they wanted a contractor to do the rebuild. Oh, sure, but who the contractor was, they didn't care, so long as they were licensed, and all the normal contractor things. Now, the contractor, that was an interesting thing in of itself. But like, the contractor really had to work hand-in-hand with them to clear everything and all of that, but the same sort of thing on a lot of the stuff. So, you know, with the mitigation crew, like, they didn't care who it was, so long as they were licensed, or whatever, in some way.

Drew Thomas: 29:39

And see that's, I would say that's probably different than what most people experience if they have, say, an automotive accident. Oh, sure, yeah, most insurance companies tell you like you have to take it to a dealer, or you have to take this person.

Jeff Matevish: 29:51

Well, okay, so even for auto, I know these big box auto insurance companies for auto, yeah. They tend to like that kind of stuff, like going to specific repair shops. But you said you had mentioned that you went to maybe a smaller insurance company, yeah. And I found that that's the case too, that they don't, maybe the smaller ones don't care as much as these big boxes.

Matt Noel: 30:15

And that may well be, yeah, may well maybe, yeah, we weren't through some massive insurance company, you know, so it may well be that, like, that's kind of just how they do it. They work with local places. Now, the mitigation people were not like, you know, they, they'd be a name you'd recognize and everything. And again, I'm not trying to throw anything, but under the bus. They did a fine job with drying the place out and everything. They just, just, they weren't able to deconstruct the kitchen without destroying it.

Drew Thomas: 30:38

A massive, spontaneous deconstruction.

Jeff Matevish: 30:43

They work quick, yeah.

Matt Noel: 30:44

And there was a lot of question there really was over, like, well, are they, are they going to cover this? Yeah. Like, yeah. And I kind of had to, like, that was the one sort of, I don't say even fight or anything, but it was definitely some pushback on, like, well, we don't need to replace the kitchen. I'm like, I assure you, you do, it's in pieces. And I don't mean like, big chunks you can reinstall, I mean, in fractured, splintered pieces of wood and broken glass.

Drew Thomas: 31:06

I can pick my teeth with some of this wood.

Matt Noel: 31:10

So, so, but again, you know, we got through that they were like, they kind of had to say, Yeah, we're going to have to cover this, because you need to have a kitchen. You can't, you know, one of the things about insurance is, you know, the whole point is to get you back to whole right, right. So, they were, so they, they looked at it like, if you walked in and said, okay, I have, you know, a builder grade kitchen with, you know, you know, cheap cabinets and everything else they're going to replace, or they're going to give

Drew Thomas: 31:40

You, yeah, I have, I have a 1970s Formica and linoleum kitchen. So, therefore, that's essentially what I'm going to be brought back to, essentially.

Matt Noel: 31:49

So, you know, we just happen to have, it was tile, custom made cabinets and solid countertop. That was like the, what's the plastic kind of it's, it's plastic, but it's solid. Oh, yeah, countertop. I can't think of it.

Drew Thomas: 32:01

It's not like a resin. I'm sure I'm not...

Matt Noel: 32:03

Like, I can't even think of the name. It doesn't matter. But, yeah, it was, it's considered a solid surface countertop. It's not like a, like a Formica or anything. And so they were cool about it, like they were like, okay, here's your, here's what we're going to work with. So, we went and again, this comes back to the contractor. The contractor really had to work hand in hand with them. And that was where the biggest part of this came is that the contractor had to be on the phone with them a lot and just make sure that, you know, all the plans were very clear. What they were doing, budget was very clear. Now, once that happened, once it was approved, they were, they just kind of, they didn't, it wasn't real.

Drew Thomas: 32:34

They just kind of came in and did the work, yeah.

Matt Noel: 32:37

But to get everything approved, to get the budget approved, and all that the contractor had to do a lot, and I give a lot of credit to them to kind of do. Now, I was on the phone a lot. I gave, you know, all of this, the funny part of it, it was all done very well. We have a very nice house now. We got a new kitchen. We don't have a 1990s kitchen. We got a 2022, kitchen. But, you know, you pay for it in stress. Is really time and stress. Yeah, we, you know, it was one of those things where, like, in 10 years, maybe we would have done the kitchen, but, you know, obviously our timeline moved up and everything so, but, but again, you know, we got a quartz countertop, very nice countertop, you know, we got oak, we're not we got, you know, solid plywood counters and everything, right? And they, it wasn't like they didn't go crazy. It's not custom made. They went through, like, one of the big box stores and did, like one of the but the better brand at the big box stores, yeah. So, they put the, put all that together. The basement was another interesting thing, and a place that they were going to potentially push back on, was they, the mitigation company had the dryers in there. Just a massive amount of dryers, again, 12,000 gallons went through. It was a lot of water, yeah, so and all the pool, yeah. I mean really, all the duct work is, was the fiber duct work. Okay, yeah, the built in insulation, everything. But, you know, that absorbs water a lot it does. They came through, and I thought at one point that we were probably going to replace a lot of the ductwork, but so they did this drying for 14 days or something, and that's where the adjuster kept pushing back like they don't need to be in there that long. The drying should be done after a little bit of time. And I don't know the truth of the matter on that. All I know is they did it for a long, long time, and they actually had, they had brought in their own generator to run all these things. And finally, I, like I literally called a local electrician and had them come in and put in a 220 line right next to the electrical box, just so they had something to plug into so we didn't have to deal with this generator. So, in a weird way, I actually took a little bit on myself that didn't...

Drew Thomas: 34:41

Because you paid for the electricity then to run these things.

Matt Noel: 34:44

I got the electrical bill, the electrical bill for one month was like, and we have gas heat, so it wasn't like the heat was coming through there, but like that. And that's an interesting other thing. The gas, the electrical, everything else for that one month, you know, the walls are basically open, right? You know, so and, and then on top of that, the electrical to run all these fans and everything else. I think our gas for the month was like$1,200 I think our electrical was like eight or $900.

Jeff Matevish: 35:18

So, you get reimbursed at all?

Matt Noel: 35:19

And that's, I mean, that's the lucky thing, but, you know, it's a reimburse so we had to kind of front everything. Yeah, that's where, that's where there's some impact on this. We're not, we weren't hurting. I'm not trying to compare to anybody else, because there's lots of people get really hurt by these types of things. We were very lucky. We had two houses. We had the budget to absorb these hits until we got reimbursed on everything.

Drew Thomas: 35:39

You know. But so let me ask you this, though, when it comes to the water...

Jeff Matevish: 35:43

Were you on the hook for this pool?

Matt Noel: 35:48

I was, I was totally now, I will again, it's an interesting thing to give the water company credit, they were like, they're like, hey, we noticed your water usage was a bit high last month. Is that going to continue?

Jeff Matevish: 36:01

You don't think you would have notified me when it started creeping up a little bit, you know, in one day.

Matt Noel: 36:08

So, yeah, they...

Drew Thomas: 36:10

It's not like, whenever they called me when my daughter came home from college one summer and they're like, we think that you might have a toilet leak, right? Like, I'm like, no, she's just taking super long showers. That's a different story than what you went through. That's still about 12,000 gallons of water.

Matt Noel: 36:25

I did have a toilet leak, like, like, a year later, and they did call me, but they called me, you know, again, it's one thing to have 12,000 gallons over one night, right? Right, right, yeah, over a month. You know, it's not like they're real time reading your meter. Like, oh my gosh, we got to call this guy. Yeah, right, yeah, but, yeah, so. But they, I believe, and I could be wrong on this, but I believe that they sort of offered a bit of a discount on the amount of water usage. Actually, they're very specifically were like, oh, okay, well, we won't charge you for the drainage fee for all of those gallons, because they do.

Drew Thomas: 37:01

What is the drainage fee at that point?

Matt Noel: 37:03

When you pay for water.

Drew Thomas: 37:04

No, I know, but I'm just saying, like, my sewer bill is $19 a month. My water bill is significantly higher than that.

Matt Noel: 37:13

I didn't even know what it would have been, but it would have, I mean, obviously it would have been something.

Drew Thomas: 37:16

And it's all fresh water too at that point, yeah.

Jeff Matevish: 37:16

And it may have been a different story, because this is, you know, not your primary residence, yeah.

Matt Noel: 37:16

No. Very true. Very true. And now, interestingly, there was a drainage system in the house and everything, and I don't think it went back into the public water system, I think it went into our yard, basically, so.

Drew Thomas: 37:31

So, you had well watered grass in December, you had an ice skating rink in your yard. it's

Matt Noel: 37:38

I'm probably wrong on that. It probably does go back into public because they're regular drains and everything. But regardless, like, they were cool on that, like they did, we still used 12,000 gallons of water. So, yeah, it's not like, they could have said, I'm sorry, this is what, what it was, sure, right? But they, they worked with it. And again, you know, I, I think that I took that back to the insurance, and they were, they covered that as well. There was some stuff that was like, I just fought over, and again, I say, fought like I, you know, just got on the phone, got past some pushback, like none of it was a fight. There was no yelling. They just, I got some pushback on some things so, but, you know, you get through all that, you get an insurance person. You talk to your insurance person a million times you talk to the contractor, a million times, you talk to the mitigation crew, a million times, you know, and, and you're just exhausted at some point. So, there were certainly some things that was like, I could probably send this to insurance, but it's 100 bucks, and I'm just not, it's just not worth my time to, yeah, do that. That's exactly what it was. Like, your brain starts doing that, like, okay, we're in, you know, many 1000s of dollars. And, oh, this one thing got ruined. It's $10 like, Yeah, is that worth? Now, the insurance adjuster did ask for a list of items that were ruined and everything. And we had some furniture. We had some just stuff that was there, you know.

Drew Thomas: 39:07

Now, did they just, they didn't take your word for that, though, did they? Or did you have to provide receipts or photos or anything to like, I mean, or did you just say, like, oh, no, I had a, you know, 65 inch LCD.

Jeff Matevish: 39:18

As long as the, the value was under what the insurance policy was for, I would assume they would take your word for it.

Matt Noel: 39:26

Well, they the insurance adjuster, that's where they came into play, like they took pictures of everything. And if I, if they had any question, you know, he'd be like, could you send me a picture of that? And so we did do that where I said, like, hey, here, you know, here's this thing, and I would just take pictures and send it to the guy. He had come out of Pittsburgh. So, it was, like, it was, it was not just a easy, not like Pittsburgh is super far, but it wasn't just, like, a 10 minutes and he was there, yeah, thing. So, we did a lot on email and went back and forth on that, and I gave him like he did ask me, I'm trying to remember the order of operations on this. But he did ask me, basically for a list of values. He didn't ask for receipts or anything. Obviously, I had the thing, if I could take a picture of it, but he asked me what that thing was worth. And there were a couple of spots where it was like, I don't know what we paid for this, but here's what it would cost to replace. Yeah. And so for the most part, there were, so there are items that fall under different categories. There are some items where it was, like, you know, if I literally had, like, some electronics there that I hadn't hooked up yet and I was going to, but they were literally new inbox just happened to be in the corner of the dining room, yeah, underneath. So, a couple things like that. So, there were items where they said, we're going to pay the full value of replacing that thing. And there were certain items that they said, we will pay a prorated sort of, you know, if it's an old chair, they're not necessarily going to pay for a new chair. They're going to pay for the value of a 10 year old chair at that, right, you know. So, there were definitely some items that they finagled back and forth. And again, it's so funny, though, because at this point, you know, we're talking about the items when the house was everything, you know, sure, the total cost by the time we were done were three, you were six figures. Let's put it that way, yeah, you know. And so we were finagling at this point about, you know,$1,500 worth of stuff. Yeah, you know, between...

Drew Thomas: 41:13

So, so that's funny. I don't want to say it's funny that you say that, but it's, it's one of those things where I was looking to see and they say that, believe it or not, wind and hail or storm damage is probably the most common thing that are turned into insurance companies for homeowners insurance, but water damage and freezing is second most common. It is. It's about one in 67 homes. About 1.5% of policyholders will eventually have to return, or turn in something akin to water damage, or something along those lines. But they say that the average water damage claim is like$50,000 like $49,000 $50,000 but you also ran into an issue where you were, it was, I think yours was extensive. I mean, yours was not, yours was not a bathtub overflowed and it took $50,000 to renovate the bathroom like yours was a lot more extensive

Matt Noel: 42:08

The fact that it was Christmas night, and we than that. literally weren't there until the next morning. And, you know, we weren't there because we were hanging with family and doing all the things that you do on Christmas night anyway, yeah. So, the fact that it was a, it was like a perfect storm of not just that it happened the way it happened, you know, again, both the cold and the hot broke. So, it was, you know, coming through, you know, it was the full capacity of the house was basically pulling through there at that point, you know, and, and again, you know, it was, it was, it was the timeframe that it was. So, it just wasn't something that it just, it was about maximum impact that you could have on that type of thing without, really, you know, if we'd been gone for a week or something, that'd be, that'd be different. Thankfully we were there the next morning. But still, it was a lot.

Drew Thomas: 42:55

What's interesting. How long, how long, how long did it take? Like, really, like you said, so, so from the from the beginning of that to whenever the contractor finally, like, takes up his tarps and puts him in his van and drives away, like, about how long did it take for that, the whole thing to be

Matt Noel: 43:10

the stress came in. Because, remember, we're trying done? to get out of this old house, sell the old house, move into a new house, and now, all sudden, yeah, the really saddest part is, finishing the living room floor was really the last thing we had to do. It was done. We were ready to just start moving everything in at that point. Yeah, you know, it wasn't a question of like, oh, well, we need to do X, Y and Z, still. No, we were done. So, it was the last thing we did. And then this happened, you know, and so, so it was, I want to say the kitchen was done in June or July.

Drew Thomas: 43:45

Okay, so we were talking like six months, oh, basically, like you're talking like six or half a year by the time this was all said, done.

Matt Noel: 43:52

Yeah, and I don't know, again, you know, we were very lucky that we still happen to have the opportunity to have, yeah, our old house to live in. I don't know if that's, I don't know if they would have covered us for that period of time to live somewhere else. I'm sure they must have, if it was in our policy. But, you know, yeah, I don't know, yeah, but, and again, you know, obviously some mitigators, like, if the kitchen had been able to be saved, that would have been a different conversation to some extent, because the living room, you know, you think about what goes into a normal room, like they had to do some stuff. But really it was just rebuilding a room.

Drew Thomas: 44:23

Sure. Four walls a floor, yeah.

Matt Noel: 44:25

The dining room really was the same thing. But then when it came to the kitchen, that's where, you know, it was extensive, and we did do a lot, and then on top of that, so part of that was kind of getting to the root cause of this too. We said, well, if we have the roof open, we're going to get the walls in this room really well insulated this time around, because obviously they weren't before. Yeah, right. And on top of it, like you could, the way that the structure of the house was, you could really start to see up into, like, there's like a knee wall, like the it's a Tudor style house. So, there was an open area that was sort of like a storage area, whatever. But up in behind that really was all the same structure of insulation. We kind of had to do all of that in one go. You really couldn't just say, oh, I'll just leave this soaked insulation up here and not deal with it here. We had to kind of do all of it so, so it, really, it touched the living room, the kitchen, the dining room and our like, the master bedroom, master bathroom, because it was all sort of a connected system of insulation and the flooring and the ceiling.

Drew Thomas: 45:24

Yeah, like, when you were saying about earlier, about them, saying about how long it was taking to dry, that it was all those would take 14 days to dry. Like, just imagine, I mean, this is really simplified, but imagine, you know, taking and putting your clothes in the dryer, and your, your socks are in the dryer for an hour and a half, and you take them out, they're still damp. Like, you know, there are times when you just don't realize how long it takes to dry something like that, especially if it's dense insulation that is really not designed to retain or shed water. I'm sorry.

Matt Noel: 45:51

Insulation, if it gets wet like that, it's not something you say, I'll just dry out the insulation. It's, it really is a pull everything out, yes, replace everything kind of thing. And we actually did, I don't know if I'd still do it this, this way, going looking back, but we did, like, spray foam in those walls, because, again, it had nothing there at that point. You could just see the brick basically, you know, or the sheathing. And so we went a little bit extra. And again, insurance was cool about it. They covered it, you know. They were like, we'll handle that. You know, the basement, the, the some of the ductwork had actually ripped off the ceiling, because all the water that went through it just was too much for it, so it literally ripped off.

Drew Thomas: 46:28

Well, again, you know that, that ductwork is designed to move air, not, not, not, water yeah, and that water is a lot heavier than the air that it's designed to move. You know.

Matt Noel: 46:38

We even had one spot where it was just like a hole had opened. So, it wasn't even like the whole thing ripped off. It was just like.

Jeff Matevish: 46:43

The weakest spot, yeah.

Matt Noel: 46:44

One little spot. Just work on through there. And then so we but again, I mean to the mitigation team's credit, like they dried everything out very well. So, they minimize, while the kitchen was a thing, but they minimized everything else, like the duct work that remained was well dried. It's been tested. There's no mold. There's no leftover anything like it was well tested. The walls where there could have been mold and stuff, they did a good job. It was well tested. There was no further issue with any of that. And again, it just took a long time, because that's where, like, the back and forth between the insurance company and the contractor took up some time, because, so that's an interesting thing, by the way. Like there were some things where they sent me a check directly, like, for the stuff that had been ruined, they sent me a check directly. For the kitchen for the rebuild, they sent the check to me with my name, but also with, like, the contractor's name on it. Okay? And the way it had to work, basically, is I had to sign it over to the contractor directly. I never saw that money directly. It went just to the contractor, and then they did all the work. And that, by itself, was a whole process.

Jeff Matevish: 48:02

They don't want you going to get another cheaper contractor and pocketing whatever, absolutely, yeah.

Matt Noel: 48:07

I mean, if you can get a certain amount, we know that happens with cars all the time, like, oh yeah, this this much damage on my car. We're never going to fix that. We're just going to pocket that, that can't happen here. So, they there's definitely a process in place to make sure that the money that gets paid out for this goes into it, because at the end of the day, you know, the insurance company, to some extent, has an interest in this residence. It has to be up to a minimum standard, right? Because they're insuring it. So, if something happens, they're on the hook for that. This is an up to code safe structure, you know. So, they have that interest in saying, like, yeah, this was done, right and it was done by a qualified contractor, okay.

Drew Thomas: 48:44

So, so that's so that brings me to the another so what I was, what I was reading, was that most insurance companies, they consider three claims inside of five years to be excessive, right? So, essentially, you know, you file three claims within five years, that's a red flag, and most insurance companies at that stage are going to say, you know what, maybe in your next renewal, you know you're not, we're not going to renew you.

Jeff Matevish: 49:11

Or they say don't file that one.

Drew Thomas: 49:13

Yeah, yeah, or at the same time, or either that or we're going to jack up your premium to the sky, right? How many claims did you get to file with, with your insurance company before that?

Matt Noel: 49:23

So, importantly, like I said, we had, as far as I can recall, we've only ever had one claim on our vehicle, and that was totally the other person's fault. Yeah, and, and we've had one claim on any house that I've ever owned, and it was this one. Now, again, this was an excessive claim, like it was a big claim. I don't mean excessive. I mean it was legit, it was fair, but it was a heavy claim, yeah, so yeah, they, they, they kicked us out right afterwards. Like they're, they're, like, here's your money, now get out. They were, they were, yeah, they. They got rid of us, and what was a worry, and this is where, like, talking to our broker, our broker was genuinely concerned. He's like, yeah, I don't know that we're going to be able to find somebody with any reasonable amount that's like, quality wise or, or premium wise, or whatever, sure right is going to be able to cover you properly. And I said, look, I will do what we need to do, like, I will work with them. I will get a you can get kits that will automatically clamp off the water if it's any kind of leak.

Drew Thomas: 50:29

Oh, and today, you have all kinds of things, moisture detection, yeah, and all that kind of stuff. Even smart home.

Jeff Matevish: 50:29

I was going to say, just monitor everything from your phone now, yeah.

Matt Noel: 50:37

Because, like, this is never, this is never going to happen again in this residence, like, we know what, how horrible this was. We're going to do everything we can so we're going to get the smart thing and the moisture sensor and everything else, right, not ever have this happen again. This will not be a claim that you will pay with us again. But, you know, that's just, it's, that's just the game with insurance. Like they, they, you know, the goal is to not pay out. That's how they make their money, right? So, yeah, so they but, but again, that's where the broker was like, I don't know if what we're going to do here. And so I just started calling around, and I found another local broker, and I told her exactly what happened everything else. And she's like, well, let me see what I can do, you know? And at the end of it, we got a great company. We, and actually our premium ended up being a little bit less than the previous premium, oddly enough. So, it again, you know, when you think about being blessed about something like I said, we paid for this in time and stress, but you know, in so many ways, we were so well taken care of. We, and that's not a cut on the previous broker. He did everything he could do to, sure, try and work with us and find a new you know, it's just, they have a pool of people. They don't have everybody that they can.

Jeff Matevish: 51:47

They work with specific people.

Matt Noel: 51:49

Yeah, and just they're the people they were working with it just wasn't going to be possible. So, so we have, you know, a good company as our insurer. We got a good broker now that's just happened to be with a different company. We had a place to live during that time. Like, just everything that you could have go was good. Now, I will say, like, one of the good things, I think the new broker was very clear on, like, okay, you're living here, but you own this house, so we're going to set up the policy this very specific way, until you're physically living there. Yeah, it's going to be like a structure only policy. And then we, when we moved to the new house, now, we had, you know, we wanted to fix up a few things in the old house and sell it. So, we sort of flip flopped. So, this now became your primary residence thing, and the old house is now going to be your, you know, it's just basically a fire policy. And that's about it, yeah, you know. And so, the funny, not haha funny, but we actually had a pipe at the old house freeze up. Oh, geez. And thankfully, no real damage, like very minimum damage.

Jeff Matevish: 52:51

But you knew what to do.

Matt Noel: 52:52

We knew what to do, and we did all you know, in that case, I said, okay, knowing what we've been through, and again, knowing that the policy that we have on this house is now much more minimum, because it's just an empty structure at that point, as far as how the insurance treats it, I didn't even bother, you know, that's where it said, okay, it wasn't a huge hit. And, you know, a couple 1000, which is not nothing. But again, thankfully, we had the budget to deal with it. And I said, I'm not even going to go through them on this. I'm not going to try, because it's not, it's not, it's not worth creating this ripple effect through what's going on with this other insurance company or anything else you know so well.

Drew Thomas: 53:31

So, that's the other thing. And I forgive me, I because we've talked about, we've covered a lot of ground, but I don't know if we've covered that. Technically speaking, there is no, unlike auto insurance, there is no requirement whatsoever, as a homeowner, for you to carry homeowners insurance unless you have a mortgage.

Matt Noel: 53:48

And that's that, right, that's what that was. Where it came down to, is it, I'd like to think that we would have had it because, yeah, it's smart to have it. But I also recognize that the only reason that I ever even thought about

Drew Thomas: 53:58

mortgage provider finds out that you don't have it is that, I don't want to say that's not, I mean not, there was never a question. Our mortgage company said you must have insurance. So, we always had insurance. Yeah. And now here's an interesting thing, if it, if we had not been able to be covered through anybody else, mortgage companies themselves will insure you. insurance on your home, they will buy insurance for you, and they will not shop around yeah.

Matt Noel: 54:41

that is, yes, and that is exactly, and we even, I don't even quite remember why, but we actually were in a position until we got the new insurance, we had to have some kind of coverage, so I think for like, a month, we kind of had to go through, like, having.

Drew Thomas: 54:55

It almost, almost feels like Cobra, like when you if you lose your job, and then Cobra comes around. says, well, we can continue your medical coverage for you. It'll be seven times what it was whenever you were working, but we'll keep it going, you know, until you can, you know, bridge the gap to something else.

Matt Noel: 55:08

But so and again, we got lucky with that. I mean, we took a hit on that for like, a month, but it wasn't that bad. And then we got set up with the new insurance company. And, you know, everything's been good since then and again, all because, absolutely, the mortgage companies always required it and everything.

Drew Thomas: 55:24

But, you know, but that so that, I mean, but that does bring up a point, like you had said that, you know, in your situation, obviously, you know, you were somewhat lucky that you did have another place to stay. You were fortunate enough that you were moving from one home to another, so you had a little bit of play in terms of your finances and so forth. But if you hadn't had insurance, like if you were one of these folks, that was just like, hey, listen, I owe my home free and clear. There's no legal requirement for me to have insurance. What, like this is not something that you could have likely done yourself. You still would have had to have hired a contractor and all these people and paid out of pocket for it. It's not like you could

Matt Noel: 56:05

I mean, I will tell you, just knowing it's hard, in retrospect, to say I would have done this this way, because I know how things turned out. I mean, I certainly would have have just fixed it yourself. Most likely, I would assume, right? been much more personal on like, if we're going to take this kitchen apart, we're going to take it apart real carefully. Yeah, right, right, right, because I'm putting this one back up if I have to pay for everything out of pocket, you know, if I'm going to, you know, I still would have paid for certain things. Like, I certainly would have paid for anything about mold mitigation and stuff, yeah, and it would have sucked, because it's not cheap, you know, but you have to do all that. I probably would have been not sure what I would have done about the drying and stuff like, I said, it seemed excessive to the adjuster, but it wasn't something I was going

Drew Thomas: 56:40

The reason that I kind of, I guess, I guess say to argue like, I left that up to them to kind of argue back and forth on that is because, like, I said, like, the average, like, like, I said, the average for something like water damage, say, $50,000 Right? You know, looking at some of the other stuff that's out there, you know, believe it or not, liability coverage is one of the least turned in things to homeowners. You always see about people saying like, oh, well, I, you know, in case the plumber falls down the stairs, I have to have homeowners insurance or something. And that may be true, because obviously medical expenses are significantly higher than most other things, but technically speaking, it's the lowest thing that's turned

Matt Noel: 57:24

I expect those are those weird things where it's in. like, the reason you don't hear about that, or the reason you do hear about that is actually because it's rare, because when it happens, like most of it, like, if I fell down at your house, I wouldn't think I'm going to sue my friend Drew I would think, thank you. Or, if I'm a plumber, they carry their own insurance and things like that. It's true. Yeah, do their own thing. So, when you get in that weird spot where it's like, somebody's actually suing the homeowner for this situation, which really means they're trying to sue the homeowner's insurance, I'm not surprised by that in a weird way. But yeah, I would think that again, you hear about it when it happens, because, like, oh my gosh, can you believe this? Right?

Jeff Matevish: 58:00

I think that happens probably more for, like, renters insurance more than homeowners insurance.

Drew Thomas: 58:05

Yeah, yeah, that's true. You could be right about that. But the reason that I was kind of bringing it up is that, believe it or not, the average, I looked this up the average premium in Pennsylvania, and we're talking Pennsylvania, but you know, around the country, it's not that different. The average premium in 2022 was$1,120 a year in Pennsylvania for, for homeowners insurance. And the average, compared to the, compared to the national average that year, it was the national average was $1,569 a year for homeowners insurance. So, you know, for people that say, oh, well, I don't, I'm not legally required to have it, so I'm not going to have it like, is it really, I mean, if, if you're, if you are a homeowner, is $1,500 a year really worth The chance of you having to pay out or come up with, $1,500 is that wouldn't have paid for your contractor to come and look at your house, probably.

Matt Noel: 58:55

It would pay for nothing. I mean, that's the, that's the crazy thing of it is, it's insurance is like a reverse lottery ticket. It just is, you know, you pay for it. You hope you never actually have to use it. Yeah, right, you ever are in that situation, you just doing the math on, okay, you know, if I ever get injured, if I ever have an, you know, problem at my house or whatever, like, the amount you're going to actually end up paying for it is just gargantuan compared to what you might pay over the course of a year and again, you know, you kind of think of even over the lifetime of owning a house. That does add up, right? But one event probably covers the entire lifetime of you paying insurance, sure, you know, and so, and it's also sort of spread out over 30, 40, 50 years.

Drew Thomas: 59:37

Yeah. I mean, you said, you said that, and it's not important what the actual dollar value was. But you said it was, it was over six figures that you that you were dealing with, you know.

Matt Noel: 59:40

I think by the time was also done, it was probably$120,000

Drew Thomas: 59:41

Okay, so, so saying that you at $1,200 or $1,200 in Pennsylvania, or $1,500 a year nationwide, you could be paying for homeowners insurance for the next what are the 100 years? No, not 100 like 50, 60, years and still not come up to that amount

Matt Noel: 1:00:03

Yeah. No, it was, it was gargantuan. And again, I of money. mean, there's some things that could have been done differently that maybe would have brought that number down. I you know, the kitchen by itself, was obviously a big hit on it. But even even so, even if they had done everything perfectly and did the minimum, it still would have been $60,000 all day long. Yeah, you know what I mean. And so, yeah, I mean having that, that insurance that we pay for, and again, for us, it was mandated. But even if I did, even if it wasn't mandated, just looking back, especially with the experience I've been through, I like it would be madness to not have that at this point. Yeah, knowing that, like, all it takes is one thing. And you know, like, I genuinely don't know what we would have done if we had to just pay all that out of pocket. Like, I'd have had to get a loan. I would have been and again, I'm blessed in that we maybe could have made it through that. There's a lot of people and even my own life where, where I would say I can't, I literally can't afford to continue to own this house. Sure, I'd have to, like, sell it in some way, or do something to get out from underneath this now wrecked house, and hope that I can, you know, get out with the minimum amount of personal liability and damage and everything else. So, yeah, I would never, I would never own a house or whatever without having that. And I will say I was a person who didn't have, like, renter's insurance. Knowing what I know now, if you know, I would go back and kick my 20 year old self and tell him, get renters insurance. Yeah, right. It makes the difference when that comes down to it, yeah.

Drew Thomas: 1:01:31

I think that it's important. And this is, I think this has been a fantastic conversation, and I think it's, I think it's important to sort of see it from this perspective. Because I think Jeff, you would probably agree that we constantly preach at people about doing certain, certain things like this, but it's easy for us to say it, because it's, you know, people might say, oh, well, you're in the business of selling this stuff. But when you actually talk with people that have gone through something like this, and you realize what is involved in the process, it's just, it's that much more, I think, impactful to understand that it's not just me or Jeff or, or, or your bank, wherever you happen to bank, or whatever your insurance company is or whatever. They're not just pushing this on you because it makes them money. I mean, it does. I mean, I mean, we're all in business to you know, we're all in business, I mean, but it really is a service to you, that if you ever have to use it, it's, it's well worth it.

Jeff Matevish: 1:02:30

I mean, saving you from having headaches down the road.

Drew Thomas: 1:02:33

And that's one of the big keys, is, I think about, like, what I went through, how many phone calls I had to make, and there were a lot. It was, it wasn't excessive, it was just a lot, because that's what it's a, it's a major thing to go through.

Jeff Matevish: 1:02:43

It's not a simple process. It was never meant to

Drew Thomas: 1:02:45

But then, if I think about, like, man, if I had be. to not only deal with, like, going back and forth with insurance, going back and forth with a contractor, if I had to also be going back and forth with, how am I going to pay for this? How am I going to and all the like, again, like I said, I could say, hey, contractor, you work with the insurance company. Here's the budget, and we'll work out this out. And then I could step back a little bit and just go about my day. If I, if it was everything out of pocket, you know, and again, I'm a DIY kind of person, so I can just think about how much would I have been trying to take on, how much would I have been, you know, just had to been in every moment of every day, fighting for like, oh, no, that's too expensive. You got to do this. Are you making sure that that's done right? Or like it would have been, it would have been my every waking thought. And it would probably be in your thoughts even now, because then you'd be thinking to yourself, was it done right? You're right, you know, is there? Is there something happening behind the walls that I didn't know about or I didn't see that. You know, five years from now, 10 years from now, is going to creep up on me and slap me across the head, and I'm going to realize that I did something wrong?

Jeff Matevish: 1:03:47

Which is, which is shocking, that your insurance company dropped you, because now they know that your house is like, completely rehabbed.

Matt Noel: 1:03:54

No one is going to have fewer incidents of this type of thing in the future than somebody who has been through this particular thing, right? But you know, it is what it is at the end of the day, again, it's a business, you know, yeah, but yeah, I have thought about that many times. I've just thought about, like, if I didn't have this in my corner, and I had a good broker in my corner, I had a good contractor in my corner, and I had, and at the end of the day, I had a good insurance company in my corner, you know, the fact that they took care of us at every step. And I don't want, like, I said, I'm not trying to throw the mitigation team under the bus. They were good too. Everybody was good. And for as much if I knew every dime was coming out of my pocket? Would I have gotten that good of anything? And they would have, I would have been doing those mental adjustments on every last little thing of like, ah, well, I could get that for half the price, yeah, but is it going to be, yeah, sure, right, everything. So, just being able to say, look, it was touch and go, like, where I just was stressed. But you know, at the end of the day, they paid everything. The contractor took care of everything, you know, the mitigation was done well, and that peace of mind, by itself, was worth my premium for the year, even if it wasn't mandated by having a mortgage company.

Jeff Matevish: 1:05:10

And even if everything wasn't done to how you wanted it done, you still have that money now that you can go and make those changes down the road, because you didn't have to fund everything.

Matt Noel: 1:05:20

And interestingly, because it had been, oddly enough, because there were all the people with vested interests involved, like the insurance company made sure that stuff was done up to par, you know, they were going to come in and make sure, is this actually correctly dried? Is this, is this built correctly? Everything else, you know, is this a reasonable kitchen for this house based on, you know, yeah, there were, in a weird way, it's like you have people who have a vested interest in the success of this endeavor. They don't want to pay for it, they don't want to pay for it. No one wants to pay for it, but they have a vested interest in getting it done, right because they are paying for it. And in a weird way, the fact that I had all that in my corner ended up being, you know, a blessing in so many ways.

Drew Thomas: 1:06:02

All right, well, we really can't thank you enough for coming down and talking to us about it. I mean, I think that it's hopefully, hopefully people will listen to this and hopefully get them, you know, think about their own situation. And you know, if you're, if you are a homeowner, and for whatever reason, you think you're skating by without having insurance, you know, you may want to double think that over again, but it also gives people a strong sense of what is involved when you have to file a claim. Because, thankfully, there are a lot of people out there that never have to do that, and if they had to do it, I don't know that a lot of people would even necessarily know what the first step would be to take. So, I think this gives people a sense of, okay, well, I'm going to have to call my, my broker, I'm going to have to call my agent, and then they're going to put me in touch with somebody that's going to put me in touch with somebody like they're going to guide you through it to a certain extent, to get you in touch with certain people, but it's still up to you as the homeowner, then to say, okay, well, now I got to find a reputable contractor, and now I got to find a reputable mitigation company, or I got to find, you know, whatever it is, it's still on you to do that stuff like nobody's just, it's not picking up the phone, making one phone call.

Jeff Matevish: 1:07:15

And everything's done for you. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Matt Noel: 1:07:17

And, you know, maybe with a bigger insurance company or whatever else, I mean, it's, it's, you know, my experience is my experience. It might be different for folks. But just, you know, again, if I can make a plug having, having a good broker, yeah, is a big deal for me. You know, having a good insurance company, having good all the way up the chain, and again, all of that, you know, I didn't make any magic choice that I happen to have a particularly good broker. We All right, just did. We got lucky, but the fact that we had a good broker, that was a starting point that they took care of us, you know, they helped us, and in some cases, they even fought for us a little bit to try and help push, to try and help get us new insurance, to try and do whatever. So, you know, definitely, if you have homeowners who are on the fence

Drew Thomas: 1:07:59

Appreciate it. Absolutely. about it, or whatever else, you know, like I said, it's a reverse lottery ticket. You just went, yeah, you might save some money now, but if you ever have to deal with it, if you ever have to go through this, you know, again, I keep thinking, like, man, what that would have been every waking moment of my life for more than six months it took, yeah, right, right, years worth of thinking about that, I'd still be thinking about that. So, yeah, absolutely, you know, all the way up the chain. You know, we just had good people in our corner, and we had a good insurance everything else, I 100% I'd do that over I wouldn't do any of this over again, but I do, I'd make those decisions on having a good broker, having a good insurance company pay, you know, making that investment in what is otherwise my other most expensive investment is my house, you know, yeah, having the insurance on that was so worth it, yeah, even if I, even if it wasn't required of me, you know.

Jeff Matevish: 1:09:03

This podcast focuses on having valuable conversations on various topics related to banking and financial health. The podcast is grounded in having open conversations with professionals and experts with the goal of helping to take some of the mystery out of financial and related topics, as learning about financial products and services can help you make more informed financial decisions. Please keep in mind that the information contained within this podcast and any resources available for download from our website or other resources relating to Bank Chats is not intended and should not be understood or interpreted to be financial advice. The hosts, guests, and production staff of Bank Chats expressly recommend that you seek advice from a trusted financial professional before making financial decisions. The hosts of Bank Chats are not attorneys, accountants, or financial advisors, and the program is simply intended as one source of information. The podcast is not a substitute for a financial professional who is aware of the facts and circumstances of your individual situation.

Drew Thomas: 1:10:07

The story related today is just one example of a homeowner's need to quickly deal with an expensive and unexpected situation. When your ceiling is caving in and water is rushing everywhere, there's really no option but to deal with it, regardless of the cost involved. Having homeowners insurance is the only realistic way that many of us could possibly hope to pay for the repairs in a timely manner. Though many of us tend to think of insurance when we see homes that have been destroyed by fire, hurricane, tornado or other natural disaster, your policy can certainly be engaged for other reasons. We hope that Matt's true story today helps to give you some sense of what a situation like this could look like. But of course, everyone's experience can be different depending upon the kind of damage, what your policy covers and who holds it. So, please be sure to check your coverage carefully. AmeriServ Presents Bank Chats is produced and distributed by AmeriServ Financial, Incorporated. Music by SchneckMind. Co-hosted and executive produced by Jeffrey Matevish. If you haven't yet subscribed, please consider doing so. But perhaps even more importantly, consider sharing our episodes with people you know who could benefit from the content. For now, I'm Drew Thomas, so long.