If you’re considering a home warranty plan, you’ve come to the right place. We know there are a lot of home warranty companies offering different types of plans out there and finding the best one to suit your needs can be difficult. This is a guide on how to pick the best home warranty coverage for your home and budget.
Before we begin, if you’ve never heard of a home warranty before, you may be wondering what a home warranty is. A home warranty is a moneysaving tool for homeowners. It helps repair or replace the mechanical parts and components of a home’s major systems and appliances when they fail from normal wear and tear. The systems and appliances that are covered include a home’s heating, cooling, plumbing, and electrical systems, as well as ovens, dishwashers, refrigerators, and more. Different plans from different companies have different levels of coverage, which is why it’s important to use the following steps to find the best plan for you and your home.
- Determine What Systems and Appliances You Need Help Protecting
To begin, you need to make an inventory on what you actually need covered under a home warranty plan. This can be a bit tricky, as it’s hard to predict what systems and appliances will fail in the future! A good rule of thumb is to look at how old your systems and appliances are and then compare their current age to their average lifespan. If a system or appliance is nearing the end of their lifespan then they’re a good candidate for home warranty coverage.
Another thing to keep in mind is how well maintained your systems and appliances are. Most home warranties will not cover failure from lack of maintenance. Landmark Home Warranty does offer some lack of maintenance coverage, but usually only if the problem was undetectable by a home inspection before a homeowner purchased a home. If you have not taken good care of your systems and appliances, a home warranty plan may not be for you. Home warranties take care of failures caused by wear and tear, not lack of care.
Once you’ve made a list of the systems and appliances in your home that are well maintained but nearing the end of their average lifespans, it’s time to find a home warranty plan that covers your list!
- Get a Home Warranty Quote
Request home warranty quotes from a variety of home warranty companies. As boring as it sounds, try to get an example of the company’s contract before you purchase a home warranty plan so you know the exact things that are covered, excluded, and any monetary limits they may have.
Some companies offer contract-level monetary limits, which means there are no monetary limits on specific systems and appliances but the company will not cover more than a certain dollar amount for all repairs or replacements in a contract year. Other home warranties may have dollar amounts on certain systems and appliances. By reading the contract, you’ll be able to see which home warranty plan will provide the most coverage on the particular systems and appliances that you need covered.
Some home warranty companies provide a network of contractors for homeowners and help them find the right fit. Other home warranty companies make homeowners find their own contractor. The latter, coupled with monetary limits, could mean that the homeowner will pay more out of pocket for repairs than home warranty companies that have a set pre-negotiated price with their network of contractors.
- Compare Plans and Choose
Once you have your list of systems and appliances that you need home warranty coverage on and a good understanding of what the various home warranty plans on offer cover, it’s time to choose the one that fits you best! Choose the home warranty that offers the most coverage with the least amount of limits for the systems and appliances on your list.
Landmark Home Warranty offers different plans for different homeowners. Homeowners who have just purchased or are in the process of purchasing a new home can get our real estate plans. These plans cover parts and components of the major home comfort systems, including heating, cooling, electrical, and plumbing, as well as a good number of the major home appliances. The larger plans cover more and more components and appliances.
Homeowners who have lived in their home longer than 30 days can choose between a plan that just covers the home’s systems or a plan that covers the home’s systems and appliances. Regardless of which plan a homeowner chooses, they can download a brochure for each type of plan here, or they can look at the home warranty plans here. (Tip: click any system or appliance to see the full coverage, limits, and exclusions for that item. You can see our full guide on comparing home warranty plans here.)
We hope this guide was helpful in picking the best home warranty plan from a wide variety of home warranty companies. If Landmark was your choice, we are excited to welcome you to the Landmark Family! You can find more helpful tips by reading through all of our repair and maintenance articles.