Rental Property Investor · Diamond Bar, CA · Member since 2014 · 25 posts · 2 votes
Hi,
My rental condo is on 1st floor, this unit was flooded because of upstair unit water heater leaking. I did not buy insurance for my unit, Upstair unit owner let me to claim to his insurance company-All State. The unit was wet everywhere, tenant has a lot of furniture, contractor needs to move all furnitures to storage before remove the wet carpet. But tenant does not has money to move out, My tenants complained to me that the smell was very bad because of 3 days wet. I contacted All State claim officer, she told me "It is your responsibility to do whatever to prevent any further damages".
To prevent mold and further damages, I paid $4500 to a contractor to move all the furnitures to storage, and then removed the wet carpet.
After my unit empty, All State told me that they could only pay this $4500 to tenant because furniture is tenant's property. All State asked me to get tenant's approval to release fund to me. But tenant did not want to sign anything to release this fund to me.
I contacted All State and tenant for 2 months, but no any solution.
Any suggestion of solution to solve this issue will be much appreciated.
A tenants belongings should be covered by their renters insurance. Your lease should explicitly state that you are not responsible for their belongings and that they should get renters insurance. When the tenant complained about damages to their belongings, you should have said "you will need to make a claim with your renters insurance." That insurance company may well have then surrogated the claim to Allstate, but you would have been out of the loop for any claims about your tenant's belongings.
Seems like the damages you did suffer (carpet) should have been covered by Allstate, and that would be independent of the tenants belongings. I think I would try pushing back on Allstate. If you had to get the tenants stuff out of the way for your contractor to replace your carpet, seems like all the costs associated with replacing that carpet would be covered by Allstate and paid to you.
Allstate agree to pay all other repair cost except this $4500, AllState told me that they could only pay this $4500 to tenant since AllState believe it is moving cost, and I need tenant's release agreement to release this $4500 to me, but tenant not willing to sign anything. Therefore, everything stuck, and all the repair delayed since I did not receive any repair money from AllState.