Milwaukee Public Adjuster

Why Milwaukee Property Damage Claims Are Often More Complex?

Milwaukee is not a typical Wisconsin insurance market. The city's large size, old housing stock, and being a lakeside city on Lake Michigan create a set of claim challenges that local-market adjusters, including the ones your carrier sends, often underestimate or even intentionally underscope. Knowing these aspects really makes a difference between getting a fair settlement and getting a check that is nowhere near covering your actual loss.

Lake Michigan Makes Every Storm More Severe in Milwaukee

Storms that just bring a couple of inches of snow in Madison usually leave a foot or even more on the ground in Milwaukee's south side. The wind blowing from the lake is funneled through the city's street grid causing those storm-damaged roofs, windows, and exterior walls to be more damaged by the rain than what is normally accounted for during a usual storm damage assessment. Besides, the lake-effect weather also prolongs the freeze-thaw cycle in Milwaukee, thereby causing the home ice dams, burst pipes, and frost heaving to do more house damage even in early spring, a time when most policyholders would have thought the storm season was over. If your adjuster is basing your Milwaukee claim on the standards of inland Wisconsin, then he is off to a wrong start.

Milwaukee's Old Housing Stock Is the Major Source of Deeply Hidden Damages

Almost 60% of the residences in Milwaukee were constructed way before 1960. That means balloon-frame type of construction with uninsulated pipe runs, roofing systems that have been re-shingled over existing layers until the deck beneath is compromised, clay sewer laterals prone to collapse during hard freezes, and knob-and-tube wiring in attic spaces that complicates restoration scoping. When a storm or freeze takes its toll on an old Milwaukee house in areas like Riverwest, Layton Park, Bay View, or the Historic Concordia district, the surface issues that one can see are only a fraction of the full story. Insurance companies typically try to limit their payout on older Milwaukee homes by simply giving the blame to the negative deep structural damage is they claim wear and tear that existed before the storm. We know exactly how to support the case and discredit those writings.

Commercial Flat Roofs in Milwaukee Are Understood to Be Dilapidated

The industrial heritage of Milwaukee is the reason why many of the commercial building spaces, e.g., those at Menomonee Valley and Walker's Point, the Harbor District, and the West Allis corridor, feature flat or low-slope membrane roofs. Such roofs handle snow load differently from the pitched residential ones; they also suffer from water ponding after heavy precipitation and need a very specific kind of damage assessment, which most insurance adjusters lack the expertise to perform accurately. So when your carrier sends a generalist adjuster to look at a TPO or modified bitumen roof on a commercial building, the resulting scope will be missing things. We have witnessed this over and over again in Milwaukee commercial claims.

The Issues with River Flooding and Water Coverage Disputes in Milwaukee

Milwaukee is positioned where the Milwaukee, Menomonee, and Kinnickinnic Rivers meet. Intense rain storms result in basements and ground-floor commercial spaces being flooded with water in neighborhoods like Riverwest, the Beerline corridor, and Walker's Point. The question of whether the damage is covered by a standard property policy or if a separate flood policy is required is both complex and often highly disputed. Insurers often outright refuse to pay the claims by wrongly classifying the water source. It is necessary to have someone who not only knows the lay of the land in Milwaukee well but also is familiar with Wisconsin insurance law to assist you in getting these claims settled in an equitable way.