How Much Insurance Coverage Can I Get for Mold Damage?

You may have thought you fully recovered your home after a flooding incident. However, mold may be hard to detect because it grows in hidden, dark, and inaccessible areas. But once you spot it, it may rapidly grow into a serious property issue and health risk. And so, as soon as you conceivably can, you must go to your homeowners’ insurance company with a water damage claim and cite a mold issue. For this, please continue reading to learn how much homeowners’ insurance coverage you may be capable of receiving for your mold damage and how one of the experienced New York City residential flood damage insurance attorneys at The Law Office of Craig A. Blumberg, P.C., can help your claim go over smoothly.

How much homeowners’ insurance coverage can I get for mold damage in New York State?

Well, you must understand it may be rather tricky to get homeowners’ insurance coverge for your mold issue in the first place. This is because most standard New York policies do not cover flood damage. Rather, you may have to establish that the mold developed from water damage, which is different in that it occurred from a sudden accident inside your home (i.e., burst pipe, plumbing overflow, etc.) rather than a natural disaster (i.e., heavy rainfall, mudflow, etc.) in which the water originated outside.

With that being said, even if you are successful in your claim, your policy may place a limited cap on mold issues. Usually, this may only be a few thousand dollars, which is likely far lower than your actual damages. Or, there may be a sublimit for mold issues, which is a smaller bucket inside your overall policy. For example, if you have the standard $300,000 dwelling coverage, there may be only 10,000 or less set aside for mold-related repairs.

What are some reasons why my insurance company might deny my mold damage claim?

Being that you may already be limited in the payout you receive for your mold damage, you must avoid doing anything else that may jeopardize your insurance claim further. That is, your homeowners’ insurance company will likely make any attempt to minimize or deny your request entirely. Below are examples of potential reasons they may get back to you with:

• They may claim your mold damage was from a gradual leak, seepage, humidity, or failure to maintain your home, rather than from sudden, accidental water damage.
• They may claim your mold damage is worse because you failed to mitigate immediately after the water damage event took place (i.e., did not ventilate your home, etc).
• They may claim it is unclear that your mold damage originated from water damage inside your home if a flood event occurred in your area right before this.

You probably have more questions regarding this topic, and we would be happy to answer them for you. So please schedule an initial consultation with one of the skilled New York residential property damage claim attorneys from The Law Office of Craig A. Blumberg, P.C. We look forward to our conversation with you.