How This Works, Step by Step

Stage One: The Loss Gets Agreed

Before anything else happens, you and your insurer settle on a figure for the damage to the building. Contents are separate.

That figure is the input to everything that follows, so it is worth taking seriously rather than accepting quickly. Nothing downstream can be better than the number agreed here.

Should I Have Somebody Check the Adjuster's Figure?

Stage Two: The Sixty Per Cent Test

Ohio Revised Code section 3929.86 asks one question of that agreed figure: does it equal or exceed sixty per cent of the aggregate limits of liability on all fire policies covering the building.

Below that, nothing unusual happens and the money is disbursed under the policy in the ordinary way. At or above it, the path changes.

Note that the test is proportional. A modest house insured for a modest sum crosses it on a serious fire exactly as a large one does. The full position is on our page covering the fire escrow.

Stage Three: The Money Goes Somewhere Else

Where the threshold is met, the insurer transfers proceeds to the municipal corporation or township, pro rata across every company insuring the building. The designated officer places them in a separate fund held as security against the cost of removing, repairing or securing the structure.

The insurer must give the subdivision your name and address, and the subdivision must contact you, certify that it has the money and explain what happens next.

What If Nobody Contacted Me?

Stage Four: Getting It Back

Three routes, and which one suits you depends entirely on what you intend to do with the property.

Finish the work. The fund returns when removal, repair or securing is complete and proof reaches the designated officer, and in any event within sixty days of that proof.

Submit an estimate. A contractor's signed estimate of the cost of that work lets the officer return the fund in excess of the estimate, provided the subdivision has not commenced the work itself.

Negotiate. The statute expressly permits an agreement transferring funds where some other reasonable disposition of the property has been negotiated.

Which One Fits Somebody Selling?

Running Alongside: The Vacancy Clock

Separate from the money and worth watching, because it moves in the opposite direction.

Where the building has been ordered vacated, the licence fee falls due within thirty days, liability insurance is required within thirty days and throughout, and the annual charge escalates to $2,700 at two years and $3,500 at five. Late payment adds a fee equal to the licence fee or $1,000, whichever is less.

So the longer the money sits unreleased, the more the waiting costs. Owners who stall on principle end up paying for the principle.

Where We Come In

We check the parcel record for the jurisdiction, the recorder for the deed and any lien, the permit history, and whether the walls are load-bearing masonry or veneer over frame, which on this stock is worth more than any other single structural question.

Then a written figure with every line visible: finished value, cost of the work, carrying cost and margin. Our preference is that you pursue the fund and we buy the building, kept separate.

What If the Numbers Favour Keeping It?

What Never Happens

No fee at any stage. No request that you clear the site, board it beyond making it safe, commission a report or repair anything first. No requirement that your claim be settled. No assignment of the contract to a third party. And we do not pursue your escrow release for you, because you are the named insured and that money is yours whether or not any sale happens.

Common Questions About the Process