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About this hub: method, sources, and limits

What this hub is for

The Hollywood Claim File is an information hub about one subject: how water damage insurance claims work in Florida, explained for the homeowners of Hollywood and South Broward who have to live through them. It was built around a simple observation from years of drying houses here — the physical work of a water loss finishes in days or weeks, but the claim runs on paper for months, and homeowners are usually handed no map of that second process. The guides here are the map: the claim sequence, the documentation that supports it, the adjuster visit, the state's deadlines, the boundary between homeowners and flood cover, and the routes that exist when a claim is denied or underpaid.

What it is not

It is general information, published for education. It is not legal advice, not insurance advice, and not an adjusting service; no page here interprets any individual's policy or predicts any claim's outcome. Insurance is a contract, and the contract — your policy, with its forms, endorsements and deadlines — outranks every summary, including the ones in this hub. Florida insurance law has changed repeatedly in recent years, most significantly in December 2022, and may change again; statutory points are stated with their section numbers precisely so a reader, an agent, a public adjuster or an attorney can verify them against the current official text in minutes.

Method

Pages were written from primary and regulator sources first, and from restoration field practice second. Where a page describes how claims are "typically" handled, it describes the ordinary sequence used by Florida carriers — notice, mitigation, inspection, scope, estimate, supplement — as documented in regulator guidance and standard policy forms. Where a page describes documentation practice — moisture mapping, daily drying logs, dated photography — it describes work performed to the IICRC S500 standard for water damage restoration (with S520 the companion standard for mold), which is the framework the publishing company's own crews work under: thermal imaging and moisture mapping on every job, dated photographs, and daily moisture logs kept for insurers as a matter of routine.

Principal sources

• Florida Statutes §627.70132 — notice of claim and supplemental claim deadlines for property insurance (one year / eighteen months, as amended in December 2022), and the prohibition on assignment of benefits for policies issued or renewed on or after January 1, 2023.
• Florida Statutes §626.854 — the definition and regulation of public adjusters, including the fee caps (generally 20% of a claim payment; 10% during the first year after a declared hurricane event).
• Florida Office of Insurance Regulation — consumer guidance on property claims, insurer duties and the state's insurance market rules.
• Florida Department of Financial Services — consumer resources, including the state mediation program for property insurance claim disputes.
• FEMA and the National Flood Insurance Program — the definition of flood, flood policy structure, waiting periods and coverage scope used on the flood-versus-homeowners page.
• IICRC S500 and S520 standards — the professional standards for water damage restoration and mold remediation referenced in the documentation guidance.

Who publishes it

Corrections are welcome in the same spirit the hub was written: if a statute has moved or a summary misstates a source, the sources above are the standard the pages should be held to.