Hurricane Claims on Historic Properties

The adjuster's estimate says your roof costs a certain amount to replace. It's a perfectly reasonable number — for a house built in 1990.

Yours was built in 1840, it sits in a preservation district, and the slate on it isn't sold at a builders' merchant.

We're Insurance Claims Consultants. We've spent 35 years working claims on old buildings from Charleston through Savannah, Beaufort, Georgetown, New Bern and Wilmington. This page explains where those claims go wrong.

Call (864) 497-2151. First conversation is free.

Where the Estimate Falls Short

Carriers price repairs using estimating software. It's built on regional averages for standard construction, and for most claims it works well enough.

On a historic building it produces a number that has almost no relationship to what the repair costs.

The software prices a roof. Your roof is slate, laid in a pattern the software doesn't recognise, on sheathing that isn't dimensioned like modern lumber. It prices windows. Yours are true divided-light sash with wavy glass and hand-planed muntins, in openings that aren't square because nothing built by hand is. It prices interior walls. Yours are lime plaster on riven lath, which cannot be repaired by anyone who only knows drywall.

None of that makes the claim unpayable. It makes the carrier's opening number wrong, and correcting it requires showing what the work actually involves rather than arguing that the estimate feels low.

The Matching Problem

This is the most contested issue on historic partial losses, and it's worth understanding before an adjuster raises it.

A storm destroys half your slate roof. The other half is fine. The carrier offers to replace the damaged half.

The problem is that new slate will not match hundred-year-old slate. Different quarry, different colour, different weathering. You end up with a building that is visibly repaired — and in a preservation district, a repair that doesn't match may not be permitted at all.

Most policies contain language about restoring the property to a uniform appearance, or about matching materials where a partial repair would leave a mismatch. Whether that language obliges the carrier to fund full replacement rather than partial repair is exactly the dispute, and it turns on the specific wording of your policy and how your state treats it.

The same argument arises with brick, with heart pine flooring, with cypress siding, with plaster mouldings — anywhere a partial repair leaves a visible seam.

Ordinance or Law Coverage

An old building is almost never built to current code. That doesn't matter until it's damaged.

Once a repair crosses a certain threshold, the work generally has to meet today's requirements — wind uplift, electrical, egress, sometimes structural upgrades that weren't contemplated when the building went up. Those costs can exceed the damage itself.

Standard property policies exclude the cost of complying with building codes. Ordinance or law coverage is an endorsement that pays for it, and many owners either don't have it or have it at a limit set years ago that no longer reflects what compliance costs.

Two practical points. Check your declarations page for it before you need it. And where you do have it, the claim needs to separate code-driven costs from repair costs, because carriers apply the endorsement narrowly and will not do that separation for you.

Review Boards and the Restoration Period

In a preservation district, exterior work needs approval before it starts. Charleston's Board of Architectural Review, Savannah's Historic District Board, and their equivalents elsewhere all operate on their own schedules.

That approval process is calendar time no contractor controls and no homeowner can shorten. It also comes before the work rather than during it, so it extends the total period of disruption significantly.

Why this matters financially: additional living expenses and loss of use are paid for the period the property is unusable. Carriers frequently calculate that period from the construction schedule alone, ignoring the months spent waiting for approval. That's a documentable difference and it's worth arguing.

The same applies to specialist trades. Plaster, historic masonry, joinery and slate work are done by a small number of people in any given region, and after a regional storm they are booked. A delay caused by genuine scarcity is not a delay you caused.

Damage That Surfaces Later

Old buildings hide storm damage in ways modern ones don't.

• Plaster. Water gets behind lime plaster and stays there. The failure — bulging, cracking, separation from the lath — can appear weeks or months after the storm, long after the claim has been closed.
• Heart pine and old-growth timber. Dense old wood absorbs slowly and dries slowly. Moisture readings taken a few days after a storm can look acceptable while the material is still wet through.
• Soft mortar. Historic brickwork uses lime mortar, which is deliberately softer than modern cement. Driven rain erodes it, and the damage isn't obvious from the ground.
• Foundation and pier movement. Buildings on brick piers or shallow footings can shift after saturated ground dries. The evidence appears as doors that no longer close and cracks that weren't there before.

This is why closing a historic property claim quickly is often a mistake. Where damage is likely to emerge later, that should be raised before the claim is settled rather than after.

Documenting an Old Building

The standard advice — photograph everything — is truer here than anywhere, because the building's condition before the storm is exactly what the carrier will dispute.

• Photograph the details, not just the damage. Mouldings, hardware, glazing, flooring patterns. If it has to be replicated, it has to be evidenced.
• Find anything that documents prior condition. Survey reports, listing photographs, insurance inspections, restoration invoices, historic register documentation.
• Keep damaged material. A slate, a section of moulding, a length of siding. It's the sample a specialist works from and the proof of what was there.
• Get an assessment from someone who works on old buildings rather than a general contractor. The two produce very different scopes, and the difference is the claim.

How We Help

When you hire us, we take the claim off your hands. We scope the repair as the building actually requires rather than as estimating software assumes, separate code-driven costs from repair costs, account for review board timelines in the restoration period, and put the matching argument to the carrier properly.

Historic property claims are underpaid more often than they're denied. The carrier accepts the loss and prices it as though the building were ordinary.

Charleston, Savannah, Beaufort, Georgetown, New Bern, Wilmington — anywhere in the Carolinas or Georgia. Call (864) 497-2151.