I have an 8 year old home, thinking about buying a warranty... The question is is it worth it?

6/12/2008 2:13:37 PM

paying for warranties is almost never worth it

6/12/2008 2:18:51 PM

what does it include? wouldn't it be better to save/invest that money then if you do need repairs you can DIY.

this sounds a lot like volcano insurance!

6/12/2008 2:20:13 PM

is there a specific reason you are considering purchasing one or kjust because...

oh and [chit chat]spend your money on english lessons instead[/chit chat]

6/12/2008 2:21:32 PM

Quote :

"strange enough, I have an old republic home warranty that came in handy just yesterday. It was hot as balls in our house during the heat wave--turns out the compressor is gone and they are going to replace it. I paid ~$400 for the warranty and the repairs are going to be much more than that when it is all said and done. Plus I had a plumber come out and clear one of my drain lines a few months ago. We renew our home warranty every year and it more than pays for itself with our older house (built in 1962). "

For me, in an older home and I am not really handy at all-- it has definitely been worth it.

6/12/2008 2:31:09 PM

I was considering one b/c I my ac unit. That was the only thing that could potentially break that would make it worth it.

6/12/2008 2:34:27 PM

Make sure you know exactly what is excluded in your terms. A lot are garbage and exclude many of the most expensive things that need replacing. I had a couple items that needed fixing the first year I was in my home, and the damned warranty covered none of them.

6/12/2008 2:36:23 PM

^^ same boat. my new house has an 18 y/o trane heat pump in it...i think it still has 5-6 years on it but im getting a warranty for year 1 just in case. well actually the seller is but it still seems like i'm paying for it

Quote :

"I had a couple items that needed fixing the first year I was in my home, and the damned warranty covered none of them."

what stuff wasn't included?

6/12/2008 2:37:18 PM

I hate HVACs. My POS Carrier is ready to bite is. 6k out the fucking door, and this is after i just spent 10k+ on other renovations.

6/12/2008 2:45:48 PM

Worth the effort to make the seller pay for one at the point of sale... Otherwise, I wouldn't bother. If you aren't going to be able to afford it when something breaks, (and I mean something that a regular homeowner's insurance policy won't cover) then you probably can't really afford to own the home.

We had one put in place for our home when we bought (a 30 year old home we bought 3 years ago) used it once. In the time since then, I've had to replace & do several regular maintenance type things... if I add up costs in materials in stuff done myself, as well as the couple things that required having a professional come out, it was still cheaper to fix it cash than to pay for the warranty.

Put some money aside each month for the possibility for repairs, and be done with it. (On a side note, do you know who the builder was?)

[Edited on June 12, 2008 at 2:53 PM. Reason : tense.]

6/12/2008 2:51:47 PM

^ i disagree with that statement, its plenty easy to afford a home, but not necessarily easy to be able to afford a 6k new AC system all of the sudden. With a warranty you could pay $400 and be covered on that kinda thing.

I'm honestly not worried about anything but the ac unit, I figure that everything else in the house I could replace with minimal help. But an AC unit would be something i would want a professional to install.

6/12/2008 3:10:43 PM

Quote :

"^ i disagree with that statement, its plenty easy to afford a home, but not necessarily easy to be able to afford a 6k new AC system all of the sudden. With a warranty you could pay $400 and be covered on that kinda thing. I'm honestly not worried about anything but the ac unit, I figure that everything else in the house I could replace with minimal help. But an AC unit would be something i would want a professional to install."

It was meant as more of an opinion than an eternal truth... I presume you thoroughly inspected the house and would know if the A/C unit were shot, or older and at risk. $6k seems like a hefty price to pay for HVAC repairs, unless everything in the system were to go bad. Still, it depends on your comfort with different levels of risk.

$400 / year is a lot to pay for "Just in case my heating system dies" when most problems can be averted with regular maintenance. And in an 8 year old house, a properly maintained HVAC system should have a good decade plus left in it. I'm simply saying, for us, it would have proven to be not worth the time... and a 30 year old house would seem to be at higher risk for those types of failures than an 8 year old house. It's your money of course.



[Edited on June 12, 2008 at 3:24 PM. Reason : .]

6/12/2008 3:23:00 PM

6k for a hvac? the whole thing?

wtf died in it? a moose?

seems kinda high.... but ill ask my dad about it, i think you got ripped though

6/12/2008 3:49:17 PM

you did get ripped.

God I am glad I am a GC

6/12/2008 4:07:37 PM

I havent gotten anything installed right now. HVAC replacement is one of the single most expensive things you can do to your home. Im havent been ripped yet as I am just getting estimates rigt now. I have gotten 3 estimates so far. Prices are ranging from 3500-6000. The 6000 is for a Trane Dual Fuel unit ($$$$). The low end is a Goodman. All 3 ton units. There is some other work being done (adding a return and possibly enlarging the plenum that feeds the downstairs). If I wanted to put some builder grade shit in, I could stay in the 3-4k range. Not trying to do that. My unit is being replaced because it doesnt work well and eats up way too much energy. It is a packaged gas unit currently.

I am having 2 or 3 more places come in for estimates. If any of you are qualified to do this, and think you can do it cheaper, then by all means PM me, but given my research and knowing other people that have gotten it done, I am doing it very cheaply. My coworker is paying 9 grand to have a smaller unit replaced in chapel hill (I couldnt believe it).


[Edited on June 12, 2008 at 4:36 PM. Reason : ,]

6/12/2008 4:31:27 PM

How big are these houses!?

6/12/2008 4:38:28 PM

Mine is normal. 2000 square feet. My coworkers is 1400. In my opinion, they are wasting a shit ton of money buying a 16 seer unit, getting some fancy filtration unit, and wasting a lot of money on really expensive programmable therms. Not to mention she is using a Carrier. I wont buy another carrier after this unit.

Im looking mainly at 14 seer units, and am very interested in dual fuel, because I get electricity very cheaply compared to natural gas. The dual fuel gives me the best of both worlds (gas heater comes on when the outside it too cold for heat pump).

[Edited on June 12, 2008 at 4:41 PM. Reason : .]

6/12/2008 4:40:46 PM

^ are you looking at a 3 ton for the whole 2000 ft^2?

6/12/2008 4:46:52 PM

i've got a 1680 square foot house built in '62, most everything was installed in 2000 (A/C, water heater, dishwasher, hardwood floors, etc.)...worth a warranty?

6/12/2008 4:48:34 PM

3 ton for the entire house. That is what I currently have. It doesnt work well. 2 of the 3 estimators said 3 ton is what should go back (based on their heat calcs). However, one guy is recommending a 4 ton unit. he did not do a heat calc. However, the problem with my house is the supplies. Only 12 inch supplies going upstairs and downstairs. Very very difficult to enlarge the upstairs. He wants to add an additional return downstairs (14 inch), so a 4 ton unit will have plenty of air available to brute force more air to the upstairs zone. I want to believe him, since the upstairs simply doesnt cool well on hot days. But he is in the minority w/r to tonnage, and other pros think I would be crazy with a 4 ton unit. But it makes more sense to me, since 3 ton is fucking lousy as hell currently. Im between a rock and a hard place. I can get no consensus from all the pros...

[Edited on June 12, 2008 at 4:56 PM. Reason : .]

6/12/2008 4:52:26 PM

^^ 8 years on all that stuff is relatively new... Any reason to believe it's not been well kept, or any unusual conditions about the house that might make it higher risk? (Also, in the context of the conversation... what brands are the big appliances?)

[Edited on June 12, 2008 at 4:52 PM. Reason : .]

6/12/2008 4:52:38 PM

Depending on what all it covers, I'd say probably no. Now that my A/C is being replaced, I probably won't renew it. That is the main thing I held it for because I knew it was on its last legs. Other than that, most of the major repairs aren't covered by home warranty.

6/12/2008 4:53:18 PM

^^ well, i only know about the owners of the past 2.5 years, and i think they probably took very good care of it...before that, i don't know

i have to check on the A/C, but the fridge and dishwasher are low-end hotpoints and the range/oven is a craptastic frigidaire (actually, it has 2 ovens...there's also the original from '62, it's a frigidaire with the line beneath it "a product of general motors" and that thing is absolutely amazing...it's smaller than most ovens, but perfect for 2 people)

i always though hotpoint was a relatively low-end brand, though the dishwasher and fridge seem to work just fine...the range screen doesn't work at all and sometimes the timer goes off randomly...it also can't keep time to save its life

6/12/2008 5:07:36 PM

mine came w/ a 1 year warranty. my house was built in 1964 and i bought it 2 years ago. the [10 year old] gas pack crapped out the first winter and the warranty covered it thankfully. when it expired i let it go, though.

6/12/2008 5:15:42 PM

I have a 1600 sq. ft. house built in 1975. I was planning to get a warranty and had a couple of people recommend "America Home Shield", but when I actually looked into them they looked terrible. There is no way I'd spend any money with them after reading some of the customer service experiences. http://tinyurl.com/488fb6

I'll check out Old Republic, but I don't know if it's worth dealing with them. My AC Compressor is very old, but the furnace, water heater, etc. are all much newer. It would be great to have a warranty for a couple of years and then get a new compressor out of the deal, but it seems like most of these companies try to do anything they can to screw you out of warranty service. Even when they do provide service you're probably going to get the bottom of the barrel parts. I'd almost rather pay out of pocket and get a nice unit.

6/12/2008 5:17:37 PM

Old Republic has been very good with regards to customer service for us. They always are able to send out a technician within a day or two and I have been impressed with the workers they have sent us.

6/12/2008 5:20:19 PM

mine was w/ american home shield. i didn't have any particularly bad experiences with them. i didn't get to choose the company and it was just included when i bought my house.

6/12/2008 5:22:08 PM

No. pay yourself the cost of the warranty and get better prices on services you need with the cash you have saved by not buying a home warranty.

6/12/2008 10:14:05 PM

When this apartment was purchased I think the person selling it threw in a 1-year warranty through American Home Shield, and it was used and useful.

It wasn't $400, it was a good amount more than $400 I think, and this isn't a very special apartment (actual worth of this place was about $80,000). The person that owned this before us was an investor and pretty much stretched all the stuff in here to the limit (as in I came to realize a lot of things were about to break after I'd moved in). The AC went out first, with a coolant leak being the diagnosis (it had an obviously bad weld and it was $55 for them to repair the line and refill the unit, which made it nice and cool again for AC). I thought that was all well and good til my roommate made a joking comment something along the lines of "Haha, some poor bastard's air conditioner is squealing out there, I wonder how long it'll be until they notice it". Yeah that ended up being us, so I called in the warranty repair again and they sent out another company to take a look at it for us, the guy said he either had to replace the compressor in the unit or he had to replace the unit itself (the outdoor part). So a little while later they get approval to replace the unit and I've got a new unit with a new pad and a couple of improvements on the outside of the building (just replacing old hoses with non-degrading lines and another good weld on the new line into the house) and after the $55 initial fee we only had to pay $75 for the new pad for the AC unit (and they hauled away the old one). A little while later I noticed some water in the water heater closet on the floor, so I mentioned it to my dad and we called in another warranty repair. Thing was rusted almost entirely through and actually had the bottom fall out as they were removing it (that was a fun mess to mop up, though thankfully they drained about 95% of the water out before hauling it outside). To put in the new unit they had to bring my apartment up to code (which they did with some sketchy engineering but it works), and bringing it up to code wasn't covered under the warranty so we had to pay like $55 + $350 for that.

We definitely got our money's worth out of the warranty, and they don't cover some stuff but it is reasonable stuff that I wouldn't expect to be covered under warranty (IMO). The warranty applies directly to the specific piece of hardware that went bad like the AC unit or the dishwasher or the water heater, not anything required to bring it up to code or to protect it or anything like that.

I'd say I agree with the "get it for one year and don't renew it" plan, as it makes sense to have a one year warranty on the house when you first buy it. That gave us time to figure out most of what was wrong with the stuff that came with the place and to fix it. Beyond that I guess it's a "safety net" but it is not a cheap one. Also be aware that when they replace the stuff in your place that they'll be replacing it with whatever the hell they like. You don't get to pick something above builder grade, they give you what they give you. If you're paying yourself, it might be more expensive, but if you do a long-term cost analysis you'll probably save a good chunk of money by buying a slightly nicer unit (that won't die 5 years sooner than the other one).

6/12/2008 10:41:54 PM

we got a 1 year warranty when we bought our house last may 29. today, our AC crapped out

6/13/2008 12:05:34 AM

Ok, since I havent seen any suggestions, I would assume those that suggested 5-6k for an AC unit replacement was getting ripped dont have any real solutions. I got another estimate today from 5-6.5k.

I think I am going to go with the Trane guy, which after looking at pricing from others, really was offering me some incredible deals in the 5k range for Trane equipment.

6/13/2008 9:35:42 AM

Call Airmakers. I had a unit replaced and I know 6 other people who have used them. Everyone got the best price quotes from them and they did excellent work. I had 3 different quotes for my system and Airmakers came in $1600-2000 less than the other two companies for the exact same unit.
http://www.airmakers.com/

Home warranties almost never work out. A neighbor had a home warranty for a house they just bought and when their HVAC system died the warranty company said "We'll replace it when you show us the 15 years of receipts showing it had been serviced twice a year to meet manufacturer warranty standards." Of course most people don't do this and definitely don't have those sort of records covering multiple home owners.

6/14/2008 2:54:41 AM