Lowballed by your insurance company? Here's how to force a fair number.

Why the first offer is low — the machinery, not a conspiracy

You do not need a villain to explain a low first offer. You need to understand how the number was produced:

• One fast inspection. After a storm, field adjusters carry heavy claim volume. The first estimate is typically written from a single walkthrough, without opening walls, testing every slope, or tracing water paths. What the inspection never saw, the estimate never priced.
• Software defaults. Carrier estimates come out of estimating software, and software prices only the scope a human types in. Default line items lean toward repair over replacement, and regional price lists can lag what local contractors actually charge.
• Scope is the real dispute. The gap between a carrier estimate and reality is rarely the unit price of a shingle — it is whole trades and categories left off: code-upgrade work, general-contractor overhead, matching, detach-and-reset items, debris removal.
• Depreciation does quiet work. Aggressive depreciation shrinks the first check even when the scope is right — more below.
• The offer stands until rebutted. Claims resolve on paper. If the only estimate in the file is the carrier's, that is the number the file settles at. Most policyholders never put competing paper in. Don't be most policyholders.

The longer plain-English version of this argument is on the shelf: why the first offer is a starting point, not a final destination. The operational summary is one line: the first offer is the carrier's opening scope, and scope is exactly what you can contest.

How to read the carrier's estimate like an adjuster

First, get the actual estimate — the full line-item document, not the cover letter. You are entitled to know how the number was built. Then read for four things:

• The four-number spine. Replacement cost (RCV), minus depreciation, equals actual cash value (ACV); minus your deductible, equals the check. A "low offer" can hide in any of those moves — find which one is doing the damage before you argue.
• Quantities and line items. Walk the estimate against the actual house. Are all elevations and slopes there? Every room that got wet? Contents? Watch for a "repair" line where replacement is required, a patch where matching materials no longer exist.
• Overhead and profit. When a repair requires a general contractor to coordinate multiple trades, the contractor's overhead and profit is a real cost of the loss — and a line carriers' estimates sometimes omit. If your rebuild needs a GC, look for it.
• What is not there at all. Code-upgrade coverage, debris removal, temporary repairs, additional living expense — policy benefits do not appear in an estimate unless someone scopes them in.

If the biggest gap on your estimate is a roof — one slope paid instead of four, repair where replacement is needed — that fight has its own law and its own guide: roof claim denied or underpaid in Georgia.

The depreciation games

Depreciation is the quietest way to lower a check: concede the scope, then age the property until the ACV payment shrinks. Three things to know:

• Much of it is supposed to come back. Under a replacement-cost policy, withheld depreciation becomes payable when you complete repairs — the holdback mechanics are step-by-step in our guide to recoverable depreciation.
• In Tennessee, you can demand the math. TDCI Rule 0780-01-05-.10 requires the insurer, on request, to provide the claim-file worksheets detailing every deduction for depreciation. Ask for them, in writing. Percentages picked out of the air look different when they have to be shown.
• In Tennessee, labor is not a shingle. In Lammert v. Auto-Owners, 572 S.W.3d 170 (Tenn. 2019), the Tennessee Supreme Court held the insurers could not depreciate labor in calculating ACV under the policies at issue — ambiguity is construed for the insured. If a Tennessee estimate depreciates labor, that line is contestable.

The counter-offer process, in order

1. Put your disagreement in writing. Politely, immediately, and without signing any release. Say you dispute the estimate's scope and pricing and are preparing a supplement.
2. Build competing paper. Independent contractor bids, a public adjuster's line-item estimate, photos, measurements, moisture readings, storm-date documentation. The carrier's file settles on documents — give it better ones.
3. Rebut line by line. A letter that says "your estimate is too low" achieves nothing. A rebuttal that says the estimate omits these trades, underprices these items against attached local bids, and misapplies depreciation shown on the attached worksheet forces a specific answer to each point.
4. Use the response clocks. Tennessee's Rule 0780-01-05-.07 requires the insurer to reply to pertinent communications within 30 days; Georgia's Reg. 120-2-52-.03 requires written status explanations when decisions stretch out. Cite the rule by number in your letter — it lands differently than "please hurry."
5. Escalate deliberately. Amount still disputed after a documented rebuttal? Invoke appraisal (next section). Conduct problems — blown deadlines, ignored letters? Regulator complaint. Unreasonable refusal to pay a demonstrated loss? A 60-day statutory demand, then a policyholder attorney. Each step works better because the one before it built the record.

When appraisal forces a fair number

Nearly every property policy contains an appraisal clause: if you and the carrier disagree about the amount of a covered loss, either side can demand appraisal — each picks an appraiser, the appraisers pick an umpire, and agreement of any two sets the amount. It is the single sharpest tool against a lowball because it takes the number away from the party that wrote it.

The law backs the tool. Georgia's Supreme Court held in McGowan v. Progressive (2006) that the amount of loss is exactly what appraisal decides; Tennessee's courts said the same in Merrimack v. Batts (2001) — amount, not coverage. And when carriers argue that a scope-of-repair disagreement is not appraisable, a federal court in Nashville rejected that in 2025: for admitted damage, what it takes to repair sits inside the panel's authority. Mechanics, costs, and when to pull the trigger are covered in our full guide to the appraisal clause.

Appraisal is binding — it can move the number down as well as up. Invoke it when your documentation is built, not as an opening tantrum. An award entered on thin paper is a lowball with a seal on it.

Georgia: the payment deadline and the 50% penalty

Two pieces of Georgia law frame every lowball negotiation. First, the clock: under Georgia's claim-handling regulation, once coverage is confirmed and the undisputed amount is determined, payment of that amount is due within 10 days; the decision itself is due within 15 days of your completed proof of loss, with a 60-day outer cap. A carrier cannot lawfully hold the undisputed floor of your claim hostage while you argue about the ceiling.

Second, the penalty: O.C.G.A. § 33-4-6 exposes an insurer that in bad faith refuses to pay a covered loss within 60 days of a proper demand to up to 50% of the loss or $5,000, whichever is greater, plus reasonable attorney's fees — and paying late does not erase the exposure. A low offer alone is not bad faith; refusing to move after the loss is properly demonstrated can be. The penalty is enforced by lawsuit — attorney work — but it is won on the record built during the negotiation: the line-item rebuttal, the ignored evidence, the blown deadlines. The statute end to end: our Georgia bad-faith law page.

Tennessee: the 25% penalty and the post-offer fee math

Tennessee gives the underpaid policyholder the same two levers with different numbers. The clock: under TDCI Rule 0780-01-05-.08, undisputed amounts must be tendered within 30 days of the insurer affirming liability, and the accept-or-deny decision is due within 60 days of your completed proof of loss — the full timeline is on our Tennessee deadlines page. The penalty: Tenn. Code Ann. § 56-7-105 adds up to 25% on top of the loss after a 60-day formal demand, when the refusal to pay was not in good faith.

Then Tennessee adds something Georgia does not: fee math that makes testing a low offer nearly risk-free. Under Tenn. Code Ann. § 56-6-913, a public adjuster hired after the carrier's offer may charge at most 25% of the increase — the difference between the carrier's last offer before the adjuster's contract and the settlement negotiated after it — never a percentage of money already on the table. If the adjuster adds nothing, the fee is 25% of nothing, and no fee may be collected before the claim settles. The offer you are holding is the baseline your adjuster is measured against, which is exactly why a lowball is the moment professional help becomes economically rational. Full tier-by-tier breakdown: Tennessee public adjuster fees.

Questions we hear about low offers

Don't negotiate against professionals alone. A free, confidential review of the carrier's offer by a licensed public adjuster takes three taps — and if we take the case, you pay nothing unless we recover more.

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