Regular Maintenance v Home Warranties

You may have been advised that you should purchase a home warranty to help you avoid extra expense if a major appliance or home appliance system should fail.

You may also have been told that you should not buy a home warranty because they are a waste of money and many are so expensive that they border on being a scam. Confusing to say the least. Which advice is correct?

Although there are some instances when a home warranty can be a good idea, if your home is brand new for instance, usually home warranties are just expenditures that homeowners do not need to make, especially in this economy.

Yes, it is true that if an HVAC system breaks down altogether it may cost as much as $10,000 to replace. However that is less likely to occur if you have it checked by an HVAC professional on a semi annual basis. For safety’s sake you should do that anyway, warranty or no warranty, so the extra $400-$500 spent on a home warranty may not be worth it.

The other thing that some people do not realize until it is too late and they have already taken out a home warranty is that very few of them cover some of the very appliances that are likely to break first – your washer and dryer.

In addition, many warranty companies will try to repair an appliance before even considering replacing it, so you may be holding on to a fridge that is energy inefficient when buying a new one would make more sense.

Instead of purchasing a home warranty consider investing the money you would have spent in the form of annual check ups for your appliances. The old saying that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure holds true for your home every bit as much as it does anything else.