Will home insurance pay for the clean-up in Victoria?

Sudden and accidental versus gradual and avoidable

Every home policy sold in Australia is built on one distinction, and every argument you will ever have with an insurer comes back to it. A policy pays for damage that happens suddenly, from an event listed in the product disclosure statement. It does not pay for deterioration, which is everything that happens slowly enough that a reasonable owner could have dealt with it.

In cleaning terms that means the following. A braided flexible hose under a vanity lets go while you are at work and floods three rooms: covered, including the extraction, the drying equipment and the carpet steam clean afterwards. A storm lifts two tiles and rain comes through the ceiling: covered, including washing down the soot-coloured staining and treating the plaster. A cooking fire fills the house with soot: covered, and soot claims are usually the largest cleaning claims we see, at $700 to $2,500 for a full-house wash down. Someone breaks in and empties a fire extinguisher or spray paints the walls: covered under malicious damage.

Now the other side. Mould creeping across a bathroom ceiling because the exhaust fan vents into the roof space rather than outside: excluded as gradual damage in essentially every policy. A shower that has been leaking through the grout for two years and rotted the substrate: excluded, and the insurer will call it a failure to maintain. Carpet worn flat in a hallway: wear and tear, which is explicitly excluded. A tenant who leaves the place filthy: that is a bond matter, not an insurance one, and we cover where that line sits on our rental property cleaning page.

The awkward middle is a sudden event on top of a maintenance problem. If a storm blows rain through a window you already knew would not close, an insurer can and often will decline. That is not a technicality: the policy wording asks whether the damage would have happened had the property been kept in reasonable repair.

Make-safe: what it is and who pays

A make-safe is the emergency work that stops the loss getting bigger. For a cleaning and restoration job that means water extraction, air movers and dehumidifiers, lifting and disposing of soaked underlay, tarping a roof, boarding a broken window, and sanitising anything that is a health risk. It happens before the claim is decided, because waiting for a decision would double the damage.

Insurers normally authorise a make-safe themselves and send their own panel contractor, in which case you pay nothing directly and it forms part of the claim. Where nobody can get to you quickly, most policies allow you to arrange urgent mitigation yourself up to a set limit, commonly $500 to $2,000, and reimburse it on production of an invoice. Ask for that limit on the very first call and write the answer down. In practice a two-day dry-out of a flooded lounge and hallway with three air movers and a dehumidifier runs $600 to $1,400 in this area, and an emergency extraction with a truck-mount is $150 to $350.

One thing worth understanding: a make-safe is not a repair. Getting a room dry and sanitised does not mean the claim is settled or that anything has been rebuilt. Keep the two conversations separate.

Assessors, scopes of works and how the process actually runs

Once a claim of any size is lodged, the insurer appoints someone to look at it. On smaller cleaning claims that may be a desktop assessment based on your photos and one quote. Above roughly $5,000 you will normally get a loss assessor or a builder acting for the insurer who attends the property and writes a scope of works: a room-by-room list of what will be done, in what order, at what price.

Ask for a copy of that scope in writing. You are entitled to see what the insurer has agreed to pay for, and it is the document you check your own contractor quotes against. Read it for the things that get missed on cleaning claims: whether the scope includes cleaning the ceiling as well as the walls, whether it includes flyscreens, curtains and blinds that hold soot and odour, whether carpet is being cleaned or replaced, and whether the drying period is costed properly rather than as a single day.

You can usually nominate your own contractor, and the insurer will either accept the quote, negotiate it, or cash settle at their own rate. Where they insist on a panel contractor, the trade-off is that the insurer stands behind the workmanship, and on building repairs that guarantee often runs for the life of the home.

Cash settlement versus insurer-managed repair

A cash settlement pays you a figure and hands you the project. The attraction is control and speed, and you keep any saving if you can get the work done for less. The trap is that the figure is calculated at the insurer’s trade rates, which are lower than what a homeowner pays retail, and once you have accepted it, anything discovered later is yours. Water damage is the classic example: nobody knows what is under a floating floor or behind a kitchen kickboard until it comes up.

Insurer-managed repair is slower and you do not choose the crew, but the insurer carries the risk of hidden damage and warrants the work. Our straight recommendation: take the cash settlement for a simple, fully visible job such as soot on painted walls in two rooms. Let the insurer manage anything where water has gone under, behind or into a cavity.

Landlord policies and tenant damage

Landlord insurance is a different animal. Most landlord products add cover for malicious or deliberate damage by a tenant, theft by a tenant, and loss of rent, on top of the standard building and contents cover. Deliberate damage is generally covered. A property simply left filthy at the end of a tenancy is not: that is a bond claim, and it is dealt with through the Residential Tenancies Bond Authority and, if it is disputed, at VCAT.

Two exclusions catch landlords out. The first is gradual deterioration, so a bathroom that has been quietly rotting for three tenancies is not a claim. The second is the requirement in many policies to inspect the property at reasonable intervals, usually every six months, and to keep the reports. If you cannot show the property was being looked at, an insurer can argue the damage was gradual. Our page on cleaning obligations in a Victorian rental sets out the inspection and notice rules in detail, and if a tenancy has just ended badly, the emergency vacate clean page explains what can be turned around in a day.

One last honest note. Restoration cleaning after fire or flood is specialist work, and there are jobs we will not take: structural drying certification, asbestos-affected debris, and anything requiring a licensed mould remediation report. If that is what your claim needs, we will tell you on the phone and point you at the right trade rather than doing half a job on your insurer’s money. Keeping the house in shape in the first place is cheaper than any of it, which is what our maintenance schedule is for, and regular house cleaning quietly prevents a surprising number of the gradual-damage exclusions above.

Insurance claim questions

General information for Victorian property owners, not financial or legal advice. Your policy wording and your own circumstances decide your claim.