On Property Insurance Claim Tips Blog

Q. If the home is a vacation home that is destroyed, are we entitled to ALE? The ALE coverage on the loss statement they sent us says zero but we are going to have to incur multiple airline trips and rental bills in order to set up demolition and then the complete rebuilding of our home. Hope you can help with this information.

A. Thank you for the question and just so you know this is a frequent problem for owners of second homes when there is a loss they must attend to. 

A lot of properties that experienced Hurricane Michael losses are starting to have Law & Ordinance issues. Law & Ordinance kicks in when the Florida and local building code requirements impact what will be required in order to obtain a CO (Certificate of Occupancy) in order to reoccupy the damaged structure. It is a separate coverage in your policy that you must elect and covers some of the cost of required code upgrades. If your property (be it commercial or residential) suffers a loss where the cost of repairs is greater than 50% of the pre-loss value of the real property, your repairs must incorporate current building code upgrades.