Combining property management with home warranty

[Erik Andersen]

Hello everyone! 

I am purchasing a 102 year old house with seven rentable bedrooms and I will turn this into a student housing situation, where each person rents a bedroom and shares the common area. My question is focused around the pros and cons of hiring a property management company and a home warranty and where would they overlap?

I know a warranty can cover the costs of major systems and appliances failing just fine but I've also heard they perform regular maintenance things like toilet clogs in a poor fashion. That's where I was thinking about property management and for them to handle basic maintenance requests while I'm gone.

Thank you for any knowledge and experience you can share about this situation!

P.S. I'm planning on performing the tenant search and advertising process myself since it is a unique property and housing situation. 

[Robert Gilstrap]

Home warranties are a joke from a management perspective. The life lesson here is: "There ain't no free lunch." The fallacy that somehow you can pay $300 and get an insurance company to give you a $6,000 brand new HVAC system is similar to how people think they "win" in Vegas.

Every warranty company we've ever dealt with offers slow service, techs who can't find their a$$ with both hands, and whatever breaks seems to only be partially covered. God forbid they need to order a part! You and I would just drive down to the supply house and buy it and be done. Not warranty companies; they want to have it shipped from Nova Scotia via carrier pigeon so they can save .78 cents. Meanwhile your tenant sits in 100 degree heat getting more pissed by the minute. Luckily they utilize that down time to post negative reviews about you all over the internet.

If an owner brings us a property with a home warranty we'll take it; but we charge a large extra fee every time we have to call them because it's such a nightmare. It literally might involve 3-4 hours on the telephone and I'm not exaggerating.