ALE housing in North Carolina, billed to the carrier.

Additional Living Expenses, or loss-of-use coverage, is the part of a homeowner's or renter's policy that pays for somewhere to live while the home is uninhabitable after a covered loss. The policy language usually promises a "comparable dwelling": not a hotel room for three months, but a place with a kitchen, bedrooms and a door that locks. In North Carolina that is what a furnished apartment in a professionally managed community is, and it is what Stay Furnished has been providing to carriers, TPAs and the families they look after since 2010.

The adjuster or the policyholder sends us six things: the claim number and carrier, the ALE budget if there is one, the household (adults, children, pets), the target area near the home or the schools, the estimated length of stay, and the billing contact. With all six we can usually offer options the same business day. We set up a real apartment in a real community, usually within a few miles of the damaged home: bed made, kitchen stocked, linens and towels, washer and dryer, electricity, water, high-speed Wi‑Fi and TV, all on. The family brings a suitcase.

The lease runs month to month from a 30-night minimum, so it follows the repair rather than the other way round: if the contractor finishes early, 30 days' notice ends the stay with no penalty; if the rebuild runs long, the family stays put with no new lease. Every invoice is dated, itemized and addressed to the carrier or TPA, so the claim file has one clean trail. Our guide for adjusters walks through a placement end to end.

Everywhere Stay works: Charlotte and its suburbs (Ballantyne, Matthews, Huntersville, Lake Norman, Gastonia, Fort Mill across the line), Raleigh, Durham, Cary and the Triangle, Greensboro, Winston-Salem and High Point, Hickory, Wilmington, Fayetteville, and the Charleston suburbs in South Carolina. We place near the damaged property first, because children's schools and the homeowner's commute do not move just because the house did. Our markets page lists every city and the communities we use in each.

A hotel solves the first night and starts costing the file money by the second week: meal receipts against the cap because there is no kitchen, parking and resort fees that were never in the nightly rate, and a family of four in two queen beds that turns into a phone call to the adjuster. A furnished apartment is one monthly number that already includes the furniture, the utilities, the Wi‑Fi, the parking and the laundry. For anything past three or four weeks it is the smaller number as well as the better one. Our hotel-vs-apartment comparison has the detail; our guide for displaced homeowners explains the process from the family's side.

You do not need to wait for the adjuster to find housing. Fill in the quote form with what you know, including the claim number if you have it, and we will coordinate with the carrier directly so you are not fronting rent or chasing reimbursement. Tell us about pets and the school district; both matter more than the floor plan.