In Florida and most states when you submit an offer to purchase a home, you can request that the owner provide a Home Warranty. A home warranty is a service contract that covers the repair or replacement of many of the most frequently occurring breakdowns of home system components and appliances. The cost will vary based on the size of the home, whether it has a pool, septic, well and there are other added protection services that the home warranty can cover.
Home Warranty do you need one?
The company that we have recommended over the past few years is Fidelity National. What we have found is that over the past several years that some of the home warranty companies have a cap or ceiling on certain items that are covered. This really can turn into a serious cost to you the home owner if you do not know what is covered and not covered under the home warranty.
Here in Florida Air Conditioning Systems get a lot of use and have a tendency to need repairs because of the weather. Let’s say you use one of the companies that has a cap or ceiling on the AC System. If the diagnosis was that FREON was leaking and which caused the AC unit to stop working and now needs to be replaced.
Company X
They would pay up to $2,500 towards the replacement of the AC System and for 1 Gallon of FREON. Sounds good right? Not at all. The average AC System here in Tampa, FL for a home under 2,000 square feet can range between $3,500 – $4,500 and to replenish the FREON could be 5-6 gallons. So this would mean that with your home warranty you would have paid a service call fee of about $75.00 (some companies will apply that towards any fees for work that they have to do not covered under the home warranty) an addition $1,000-$2,000 for the AC and possibly another $500.00 for FREON. So that can be an additional $2,500 cost to you while you have a home warranty.
Fidelity National coverages are slightly different and this is why we recommend them to our clients. Same scenario as just discussed happens and you home warranty is with Fidelity National your out of pocket expense is between $65-$75 depending on protection program you have. Because they cover 100% replacement of AC System with no cap or ceiling and 100% of FREON as well. The cost of the home warranty is in-line with all other companies, but we feel that the coverage is far superior.
We actually have a home warranty through Fidelity National ourselves on our home. The cost of coverage is $595.00 a year because we have a pool and we covered it under our home warranty plan. On December 19, 2015 our microwave stopped working. So we submitted a work order online and knew because of the weekend and it was not an emergency that we would be contacted on Monday. And we were; the technician came out Monday evening and determined that the motherboard was dead and it would need to be replaced. Now here is the dilemma, now it the 21st of December and we have family coming for Christmas Day. Tuesday we were informed of our options. The price of repair was not worth it so they said they would replace the microwave or give us $357.00 so we could get it taken care of. So Wednesday the 23rd we went to Lowe’s and picked out our Microwave, we called the technician who diagnosed the microwave and arranged for him to come back and install the microwave we purchased. Which was less than what Lowes was charging and they could not get to us for over a week.
The total for install and purchase was $365.00. So this Brand New microwave cost us $6.00 with our home warranty. As you can see that already this year we can been reimbursed over 50% of our cost of the home warranty with just this one incident. And our home is a two story home and we have 2 AC units. So we will spend the $595.00 a year to ensure we are protected.
In closing having a good home warranty on your home is definitely worth it. If you would like to find out more we recommend you contact Fidelity National or we are just a click here or call to 813-300-7116 away.