Hello and welcome to another Navigate Tuesday Tip, I'm Pam. Today we're gonna talk a little bit about special claims and some things that you need to know before you file. Key guidance for special claims is in Hud clips, you're gonna be looking for the special claims processing guide and then they also have some of the forms and schedule.

separate from that special claims guide. They're part of the special claims guide, but you can also get the separate forms in HUD Clips as well. Those are the 52-670A part two, and then the others are 52-671A through D for the different special claims. So you're gonna be looking for those in HUD Clips. The...

limits on what you can claim, when you can claim, how to file, all that is gonna be in your special claims processing guide. So it's a really good idea to have a copy.

So with the instructions, the forms and the checklist, you're gonna be looking into the special claims processing guide for HUD's rules. And Navigate also has a special claims checklist. So if you are submitting your special claims to Navigate, we highly suggest that you send our checklist.

gonna be helpful to us if things are the way that we're expecting there to be when you send it in. The checklist is on our website in the customer portal. So you're going to go to navigatehousing.com and then it's slash customer dash portal. You're gonna scroll down and click on special claims. And then that'll open a window where you can see the submission forms in the checklist.

What makes or breaks a claim is typically things that you can easily fix. So it's things like making sure you have it in by the submission deadline. People see 180 days and it's very tempting to say, okay, I have six months. You have 180 days, which can be, you know, a little more or less than half a year, depending on where those months are.

So if it's a 31 day month, a 28 day month, all of that is gonna change what six months looks like. So you wanna make sure you are submitting these things within 180 days of that unit becoming available. Make sure you're including all the items that the checklist requires.

If you are submitting a waitlist as part of your claim, you want to submit a complete waitlist. Who was removed, who was skipped, who was placed, and notes. Follow up and we suggest that you include delivery receipts. If something glitched in the email system and didn't get to the recipient, you want to make sure you can track that. So send it with delivery receipts and send it

on a schedule so that you have reminders to check that. If you receive a message that all special claims will be processed within X amount of time, then once you've gone beyond that time, make sure you are following up to make sure everything's okay, just in case you missed an email stating there was more information needed. If it's denied, you'll receive an email that says it's been denied.

And the reason, if the reason is more information is needed, make sure you submit that additional information within 30 days. Here are some of the things that have to be with your claim. So, vacancy claims are going to include the claim form and schedule, copies of your marketing, the complete wait list, and documentation of your unit prep.


It's really easy to make a one-day mistake with a vacancy claim. Remember, the first day you can claim is the day after maintenance finished prepping the unit, which is one of the reasons it's important to prep those units as quickly as you can. Your last claim day is the day before the new tenant moves in. Once there's a tenant in there, there's no vacancy claim.

Your maximum claim period is going to be 60 days on these. So if it's been more than 60 days, go ahead and submit.

With damage claims, you're gonna have to have a little more information. So you're gonna have to send in your move out inspections and your move in inspection for the new tenant, proof of keeping the security deposit, proof of sending the tenant a demand for any payment or withholding the security deposit. Typically, if you're gonna be making a special claim, those damages are beyond...

the security deposit, because if you can get it paid out of the security deposit, you're keeping what you need and sending the rest back to the tenant. If it goes beyond the security deposit, which is when you make a damage claim, you need to prove that you withheld that security deposit. Pictures of damages are critical. You may need to explain why painting costs so much or why the carpet costs so much.

you're going to want to show pictures that can clearly illustrate why you are having to replace what you have to replace. Proof of payment of the damages, so your proof of having paid the vendor, or in some cases if it's really expensive, you can submit with an estimate, but you're going to need to talk to your contract administrator or HUD as to whether that's possible.

Proof of turning the account over to collection. Now, collection is as per owner agent policy, so you need to use whoever the owner agent decides you're using. So typically, we're doing most of these things online now. You submit the claim online and you can print out an email or whatever other proof that you have that documents that you sent it to collections. And any notes as needed.

For instance, painting, regular painting, is not a special claim. But if somebody smoked and the unit was so bad that I had to remove some of the sheetrock, I had to use special paint that's beyond normal wear and tear, that may be. But I may want to include notes that explain why it costs so much to repaint, why I'm making a special claim, so that it's easier for whoever is looking at this to review it.

Once these claims are approved, they have to be submitted in tracks as soon as possible. So you have a 90 day deadline from approval to get them into tracks. But you're not gonna be able to submit until after the move out and the new move in are in tracks or after a certain deadline has passed. So make sure that you get this timing right, make sure you're submitting them promptly so that you can get your special claim money.

So if the tenant at that point happens to actually pay you some money, you may need to be returning that to HUD to reimburse the money they already paid you. But if that happens, which is unfortunately rare, contact your contract administrator to see what you have to do to get that repayed. An important note about special claims is that whether or not you know it, when the contract is set up for your property,

They take into account how many units you have, the rent, rent increases that usually happen, and you get a finite amount of dollars. So if you have submitted a lot of special claims and you're close to that end of your contract, you may want to keep an eye on that because if you run out of money, you're gonna have to wait until HUD authorizes additional funds and that can take a little while.

So it's best to know that ahead of time if you're gonna run into that issue. You can check IRM's if you have access to IRM's or contact your contract administrator to find out how much is left in your subsidy. And again, this is typically only gonna be an issue with longer contracts and in cases where you've had a lot of rent increases or special claims.

Resources for this are going to be your special claims processing guide, any guidance from your contract administrator as to how they want special claims submitted and what they want to see, and your owner agent policy for things like your collection agency or whether you have to send that claim to somebody else to take a look at before it goes into the contract administrator. So you're going to follow HUD's guidance, contract administrator guidance, and your owner agent policy.

We'd love to hear from you as to what you would like to see on the next Tuesday Tips, so please don't hesitate to contact me. You can email me at the address on your screen, or you can submit your comments through the Navigate Customer Portal on our website. Thank you for joining us, and we'll see you on the next one.