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Nobody starts a process without wanting to know what it runs. The honest answer comes in two halves. One is who pays whom, which your policy has already settled. The other is why the way an appraiser gets paid decides whether the number survives being looked at.
Start with the half that's already decided.
Under most property policy language, each side pays the appraiser it appoints. You pay yours. The insurer pays its own. If the two appraisers can't close the gap and the file goes to an umpire, the two sides typically share that fee between them.
Most people don't know that going in, and it's worth sitting with for a second. This isn't a proceeding where one side's costs land on the other at the end. Each side carries the appraiser it names, from the day it names one. Clauses do vary, and your policy's exact language controls how yours works.
This page is an informational overview of how appraisal costs are allocated under most Ohio property policies. It isn't legal advice, and your policy's exact language controls. Ironclad Assessment Group serves as a neutral appraiser and umpire. We're not a public adjuster, and we don't adjust, negotiate, interpret your policy, or settle claims.
Not every file is the same size. A single-slope hail dispute on a ranch house and a fire loss with a full contents inventory aren't the same piece of work. Treating them as though they were is how people end up surprised.
A few things move the work. How much has to be inspected is the obvious one, and one roof slope is a different assignment than a building with four elevations and a finished basement. Then there's documentation. A file that arrives with a written estimate and dated photographs starts somewhere different than one that arrives with a handful of phone pictures. Scope matters too, because when the two sides disagree about what's damaged rather than about what it costs, the list itself has to be built before anything on it can be priced. Pricing is its own work, since what a repair actually runs in Columbus this quarter isn't what a national average says it runs. And a file the two appraisers settle between themselves isn't the same undertaking as one that reaches an umpire.
Contents sit in a category of their own. Where the loss includes personal property, the list has to be built item by item before any of it can be valued. A den of damaged furniture and a whole house of it are not the same amount of work. Fire and water files are where this shows up hardest. The building is often the smaller half of the problem.
Nothing on that list is knowable from a first phone call. That's why an honest answer starts with questions about your file instead of with a figure.
Now the half that matters.
Most property policies require each side's appraiser to be competent and impartial. Some say disinterested. Competent means the person can accurately value the damage in front of them. Impartial means they hold no stake in what the number turns out to be.
Read those two words together, and the problem with a percentage arrangement answers itself. An appraiser paid a share of the award has a direct financial interest in that award being larger. That's the precise interest the clause exists to exclude. It's structural, not a matter of taste.
The consequence is the part people miss. An arrangement like that hands the other side something to point at if the award is challenged later, and a challenge doesn't have to prove the number was wrong. It only has to raise the question. So the arrangement that looks cheapest at the front can cost you the thing you were paying for, which was a valuation that holds up.
None of this is a knock on anyone. A public adjuster is engaged to advocate for a policyholder, and how that work gets paid follows from what the work is. The appraiser role is defined by the absence of that stake. They're two different jobs, and in each case the compensation follows the job.
Underneath the cost question there's almost always a comparison.
Appraisal is a contractual process that already sits inside most property policies, and it runs on appraisers the two sides choose themselves, with an umpire if the two can't agree. Litigating a valuation is a different proposition, with different rules and a decision-maker neither side picks. Those are structurally different things, and the difference is what's worth understanding before anyone commits to a path.
We won't tell you one is cheaper or faster than the other. Nobody can say that about a file they haven't seen.
Then there's leaving it alone. A disagreement about the amount doesn't resolve itself by sitting, and policy deadlines keep running while it sits, including the suit-limitation clause most property policies carry.
A formal process isn't the right answer to every disagreement. There's a point where the distance between two positions is narrow enough that what the process asks of both sides looks out of proportion to what's actually in dispute.
Where that point falls isn't something anyone can set from the outside. It depends on the loss, on what's genuinely being argued about, and on what the file already has in it. Not every gap needs a formal process, and part of what we do as appraiser and umpire is say so when one doesn't.
Our fee is set in writing before the engagement begins and never depends on the size of the award.
The terms themselves live in the engagement agreement, and you read them before anything starts.
The honest reason is that the answer moves with the file. How much has to be inspected, what documentation already exists, whether the argument is about scope or only about price, and whether an umpire stage is reached all change the size of the work. Quoting a number before any of that is known would be guessing, and a guess isn't useful to either of us. What you can ask on a first call is how a person is paid, and whether that gets set down in writing before the work begins.
Under most policy language, no. The panel decides the amount of loss, and what each side pays its own appraiser sits outside that figure. That separation is part of what keeps the number credible. Your policy's language is the one that answers this for you.
No. Appraisal decides the amount of a covered loss, never whether a loss is covered, so it can't reach a denial. Don't spend money down that path. A denial belongs with a policyholder-side insurance attorney, and soon, because the deadlines for legal action keep running.
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