{"id":340,"date":"2020-10-24T17:31:24","date_gmt":"2020-10-24T21:31:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.chrisanncleland.com\/?p=340"},"modified":"2020-10-24T19:35:51","modified_gmt":"2020-10-24T23:35:51","slug":"are-home-warranties-worth-getting-when-you-buy-a-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chrisanncleland.com\/index.php\/2020\/10\/24\/are-home-warranties-worth-getting-when-you-buy-a-home\/","title":{"rendered":"Are Home Warranties Worth Getting When You Buy a Home?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Are Home Warranties Worth Getting When You Buy a Home?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

When you ask someone if they recommend a home warranty, there is rarely a middle of the road opinion. Homeowners that have experience with warranties fall into two camps: 1) They absolutely love them and wouldn’t be without one or 2) They absolutely hate them and wouldn’t waste a second even looking at a brochure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the hundreds of transactions I have done, I have buyers who have had great success with them and buyers who would like to beat the crap out of the companies providing coverage that they feel covers nothing. I have seen entire HVAC systems replaced in some cases, yet not in others. Are warranties worth it? My feeling on home warranties tends toward the negative. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I represent buyers, I will ask them if they want a home warranty when they write their offers. As I point out, it is the only chance they have of getting a seller to pay for the policy so they can try it out for a year. Even if the warranty sucks for the entire year, the buyer is out nothing for having tried it out, other than the cost of deductibles which are minimal. If a buyer has to pay for a warranty themselves, few will choose them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There have been cases where I have helped buyers by picking up the cost of a warranty. And after my last experience with that, I am not likely to ever do it again. A home warranty is not a guarantee of coverage and homeowners who get rejected on coverage will let me know until the end of time how terrible their warranty was. All I can do is go to bat with the representative of the company who is charge of agent relations. Sometimes I win. Sometimes I lose. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is no magic warranty that will cover every major thing that goes wrong in your house for a year for the low cost of $650. Think about it. If they did, these warranty companies wouldn’t be in business long enough to survive a year. Just like any insurance product, these are businesses designed to make money. Hate to be harsh, but you will likely find many exceptions to coverage. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What I have learned about the biggest ticket items that warranties are supposed to cover, HVAC, is something I will carry with me throughout my career. You must purchase a home where there are no signs of a slowly failing system, like rust or not cooling effectively. This is why having a seller provide an HVAC service receipt that states the system is in normal working order at the time of your purchase is necessary. Unfortunately, in a seller’s market, you would be waiting for a long time if you expect to find a seller that will do any repairs or service for a buyer. A seller’s market is a brutal, risky place for a buyer purchasing a home because they often must forego repair requests to get their offers accepted. Heck, buyer are starting to waive inspection now!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Best you can do is figure that you would be lucky to get ten years from the date of manufacture on an average A\/C. Air handlers last a lot longer, so furnace replacements are not as common, but often done at the same time as air compressors. If you are buying a home with a fifteen year old original system, bank on replacing them. You can give a home warranty a shot, but don’t be shocked if a replacement is necessary and you are denied coverage.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Are Home Warranties Worth Getting When You Buy a Home? When you ask someone if they recommend a home warranty, there is rarely a middle of the road opinion. Homeowners that have experience with warranties fall into two camps: 1) They absolutely love them and wouldn’t be without one or 2) They absolutely hate them Read More …<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[27],"class_list":["post-340","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-home-buying","tag-home-warranty-coverage-for-purchases"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chrisanncleland.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chrisanncleland.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chrisanncleland.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chrisanncleland.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chrisanncleland.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=340"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.chrisanncleland.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":354,"href":"https:\/\/www.chrisanncleland.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340\/revisions\/354"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chrisanncleland.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=340"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chrisanncleland.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=340"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chrisanncleland.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=340"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}