In New York, a public appraiser cannot charge a fee greater than 12.5%. Most public appraisers charge a percentage of the total payment of the claim. Your compensation can be as low as 3% or as high as 30% of your insurance settlement, depending on the size of your claim. The most common rate structures for public appraisers include fixed rates, hourly rates, or contingency charges.
The only way the public appraiser is paid is when you, the policyholder, accept a final offer from your insurance company. In the case of a minor claim, a public appraiser may be able to find text in your insurance contract that could result in thousands of additional dollars for your claim. You can check with the state's public appraisal agency for more details; in Georgia, this would be GAPIA. Whether you simply don't have time to process the slow payment process, or if you think your insurance company has offered you less than what it owes you, it's recommended that you hire the payment services of a professional public appraiser.
A public appraiser is not affiliated with the insurance company and is only there for your benefit. This means that you don't have to pay your public appraiser until you decide to accept your insurance company's final offer. An experienced public claims appraiser should be able to tell you how many hours you will have to work on the claim. For any home insurance claim, a public appraiser can point to the money in the claims to which you are entitled and that you didn't even know.
After all, you can't expect the landlord to be an insurance expert. While the vast majority of public appraisers are honest and competent in their work, it's still very important to be on the lookout for potential scams. For example, Florida public appraisers are not allowed to charge more than 20% of the final fee in a situation that is not declared a disaster, nor more than 10% if a disaster has been declared. Most public appraisers will charge between 5 and 15%, and this amount may decrease if the amount of money paid to the claimant increases.
If you're not happy with your insurance company's final offer, you can tell your public appraiser to keep pushing for a higher settlement. Thanks to this fee structure, which is usually a percentage of the final settlement, your public appraiser will be more motivated to request higher compensation. The applicant asked if a public appraiser could include the reimbursable expenses of external experts in their advance agreement. Some states have specific laws and regulations about how public insurance adjusters are compensated for their services.
