Houses of worship are often woefully underinsured.
Existing on a wing and a prayer?
For millennia, churches, synagogues, mosques and temples have provided the fabric of community life as centers for worship, culture, arts and learning. Losing your house of worship to fire, flood, quake or wind would be a devastating experience. How much worse it would be to learn after the fact that your building had not been adequately insured?
Every year, American Appraisal completes appraisals of thousands of religious properties, many of which are discovered to be seriously underinsured - some by less than half of their actual replacement cost.
Your saving grace
Strategically situated in Asia-Pacific, Europe, and North and South America, our offices are staffed with our own full-time Consultants - shareholder employees dedicated exclusively to valuation and related advisory services. Our Consultants are native born and understand the regional market forces that influence value. Their familiarity with cultural norms ensures that relevant local factors are adequately considered. Our bench strength, together with American Appraisal’s unique corporate structure, facilitates a nimble response to global assignments.
Our services
Our insurance valuation services address various risk management issues, such as the development of underwriting data for insurance placement, the performance of an insurance to-value analysis and the allocation of premiums among individual parishes participating in regional insurance policies. Services include:
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Building insurance valuations
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Detailed inventory services
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Primary and secondary construction, occupancy, protection and exposure (COPE) data analysis
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Fine art and stained glass window valuations
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Annual updating
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Post-loss services for claims assistance
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Tagging of movable equipment
Putting a value on religious property requires special expertise that is rare among valuation firms.
We are accomplished in providing accurate valuations for stained glass, altars, pulpits, pews, confessionals, decorative beams, stone and woodcarvings affixed to the building, pipe organs, bell works, carillons, balconies/choir lofts, steeples and spires, stages, communion rails, frescoes and baldachins.
From a few years to hundreds of years old, from the tallest cathedrals to the smallest parish churches, American Appraisal has provided affordable insurance valuations to thousands of houses of worship around the world. Over the last five years alone, we have inspected and valued more than 5,500 churches for Episcopal and Catholic dioceses.
Our valuation experience is international.
We have appraised houses of worship for most of the world’s faiths.
We are active in the Stained Glass Association of America.
American Appraisal has appraised windows from renowned stained glass studios such as Louis Comfort Tiffany, Franz Mayer and Henry Payne.
We are the trusted firm to historic cathedrals and synagogues.
We have provided our services to St. Patrick’s Cathedral, New York; Trinity Episcopal Church, Boston; Grace Cathedral, San Francisco; and Beth Sholom, Toronto.
We have performed valuations of some of the world’s largest pipe organs.
The Cathedral of St. John the Divine, New York, and All Saints Episcopal Church, Worcester, Massachusetts, have benefited from our services.