Home Warranty Programs

[Mario Russo]

Hi BP, My wife and I own a townhome rental property. Recently our water heater went out (it was 25 years old) and it looks like it may be about $1100 or so to replace. This got me thinking about using a home warranty service, like CenterPoint or American Home Shield, for various repairs and replacements like this. I'll be the first to admit I'm not the most handy guy when it comes to home projects and repairs. 

Has anyone had any experience with these programs as a landlord? Do you suggest signing up for one? Are they worth the money? If so, which company would you recommend? 

Thanks in advance! 

[Kris L.]

@Mario Russo

I’ve used American Home Shield on my personal home. Might be worth it in some cases, but not most. Here is what you could expect.

You contact them to make a claim, they will send one if there fenders out to look at the issue. Expect that to take several days, and you get charged $75. They then report the cheapest way to fix the issue, and come back out to do that repair. Again, expect several days at a minimum and another $75 charge. If you are lucky, that will solve the problem, but most likely, because the cheapest fix possible was used, you can expect the same song and dance with another fix on the same thing a couple months later.

This will be very problematic if you have a tenant in place, because they probably won’t want to be without hot water that long, and scheduling the vendors will also be complicated.

They are also really good at fighting even legitimate claims.

Best case, you might save a few hundred dollars at the cost of a lot of headache, but you might not. Think about this, if these warranty companies were paying out more than they take in, they wouldn’t exist.