The most expensive mistake in a property claim is made by a helpful person with a broom.
Somebody finds a room full of water, or a terrace covered in roof tiles, or a ceiling on the floor. They do the obvious, decent thing: they clear it up so it does not get worse. And in doing so they remove the only proof that existed of what the damage was and how much of it there had been.
We are not insurance advisers and this article is not about cover. It is about the twenty minutes after the discovery, which is the part that is entirely within your control and which decides more claims than the policy wording does.
The sequence
1. Make it safe, and only that. Stop water at the stopcock, isolate electricity if water is near it, keep people out of a room with a compromised ceiling. Safety work is not tidying, and no insurer expects you to leave a hazard standing.
2. Photograph before anything else moves. Everything, from several distances:
- the room as a whole, from the doorway, so the extent is visible
- the damage itself, close
- the debris where it lies. This is the one that gets skipped, and it is often the best evidence of scale that will ever exist
- the source, if it is visible: the missing tiles, the failed hose, the open joint
- something for scale in at least one frame
Photograph with a device that records a date. If in doubt, include a phone screen or a newspaper.
3. Video, once, slowly. Thirty seconds walking through the room narrating what you see is worth more than another twenty stills, and it captures things you did not know to photograph.
4. Notify. Report to the insurer promptly. Claim conditions usually carry a notification period and it is shorter than people assume, sometimes a small number of days. Find that number in your policy now rather than after an event.
5. Only then, mitigate. Once it is recorded, act to prevent it getting worse: cover the roof, dry the room, remove standing water. Policies generally require you to limit further damage, and having photographed first does not conflict with that.
6. Keep everything. The failed component, the split hose, the broken tile. Do not throw the evidence in a skip. And keep every receipt, including the emergency call-out and the tarpaulin.
What insurers actually ask for
In our experience the questions that come back are consistently these, and they are much easier to answer if you knew they were coming:
When did it happen? Not when you found it but when it happened. For a storm this is usually answerable from meteorological records for the date. For a leak it very often is not answerable at all, and that is where claims get reduced.
What was the condition before? The insurer wants to distinguish storm damage from a defect that had been developing for years. If your answer is a memory, it is weak. If it is a dated photograph of the same roof from four months earlier, it is not.
Was the property maintained? Gutters cleared, shutters secured, known defects attended to. This is where the autumn round quietly pays for itself; a documented maintenance history is a different conversation from an undocumented one.
Was it occupied, and if not, what was done? Unoccupied property conditions are the most commonly overlooked part of a household policy, and they frequently include requirements about water, heating and how often the property is inspected. We go through this in what standard cover leaves out.
The problem particular to an absent owner
Every one of the steps above assumes somebody is standing in the room within a reasonable time of the damage occurring.
If a bura takes tiles off in January and nobody looks until Easter, three things have happened. The damage has multiplied, because a hole in a roof does not wait. The date of loss has become unprovable, which turns a storm claim into an argument about wear. And the notification period in the policy has long expired.
That is not a hypothetical. It is the single most common way a covered loss becomes an uncovered one, and it has nothing to do with the insurer being difficult.
Two Croatian specifics worth knowing
Wind damage is normal here; earthquake is not always included. Storm is standard on most household policies. Earthquake is frequently a separate extension that has to be taken out deliberately, which matters on a coast where a modest tremor is enough to bring down a reed-lath ceiling.
Insurance is supervised, and there is somewhere to go. Croatian insurers are supervised by HANFA, the financial services supervisory agency, which publishes guidance for consumers and handles complaints about insurers on its site. Knowing that the escalation route exists changes how a stalled claim goes.
The short version
Safe. Photograph, including the debris. Video. Notify. Then clean.
If you remember one thing from this article, make it the third word of that list. The clearing up can wait twenty minutes. The evidence cannot be recreated.
How we handle it
For clients under contract we go out after a serious blow rather than waiting for the next scheduled visit, and the first thing that happens on arrival is photographs, before anything is moved. The owner gets those the same day, along with a plain statement of what has to happen now and what can wait.
The other half is quieter and matters more: every inspection produces a dated photographic record of a property in ordinary condition. That is what makes it possible, months later, to show what the roof looked like before. Nobody thinks of routine reports as insurance documentation until the day they need one.
We do not deal with insurers on your behalf, assess damage, or advise on cover. We secure the property, document it, and get quotes and supervise the repair once you have agreed it.
This article is general guidance on documenting property damage and is not insurance advice. Notification periods, conditions and exclusions are set by your policy. What governs is your own policy wording and your insurer’s requirements; supervisory information for Croatian insurers is published by HANFA.