So are any of these home warranty companies worth a crap? If so, who should I look at and who should we avoid?

Waste of money

Scam. Don't waste your money.

Scam

It's a crapshoot. I've heard horror stories of 'bandaid' fixes and I've had clients call their home warranty to initiate a repair - home warranty says 'we don't have a contact in that area, call whoever you want and submit the invoice for payment/reimbursement' (and it worked). If you're buying a house and the seller is 'paying' for it - might as well. If you're asking about buying one on your own - eh - 50/50.

Huge scam, way too much to get into, personal experience with AHS, both myself and immediate family. Way too many words to write, just take my word for it. Also google their reputations, its bad.

Also, when they do send somebody, it is the guy/outfit who can't get work anywhere else and they are ass my dude.

I had Liberty when we bought our house (seller paid). I picked them because they advertised the ability to use my own choice of contractor under various circumstances. 3 times I got to use my own (plumber, electrician, appliance repair) and they reimbursed my invoice less deductible. 15 year old dishwasher also went out during my term, and even though it was an excluded luxury brand, they gave me like $300 for my trouble.

Didn't renew when my term was up, however.

When something in my house breaks I want to be able to call someone to come out and fix it as soon as possible. I don't want to mess with using someone's preferred service provider who can't come to my house in under 5 days to fix my air conditioner in August.

Bottom line...

Do you want it fixed your way or the cheapest way?

scam

Even if it were 100% legitimate, you're paying the cost of repair, their admin costs, plus a profit for them.

Why?

I had Landmark Home Warranty given to us for a year when we bought our house. We had the AC blow warm after we'd been in the house for about 6 months and they replaced a capacitor and charged it. $75 was a good deal.

Then our glass cooktop that we had put in when we moved in had a burner go out so they replaced that. Pretty good deal, we thought.

But every year the service got worse up until this year. Our AC downstairs went out in August. They had replaced the circuit board in our AC on two other occasions in the last 4 years. The outside unit fried. This time when the board went out it fried the outside compressor. It took them 6 days to send someone out and the company they assigned it to was out of our service area. 9 days went by before it was looked at and Landmark told them to rebuild the unit, they wouldn't replace it. And it would take another 5 days to get parts.

I told them never mind and went and had another company come out the next morning to replace the unit and canceled my contract with Landmark.

TLDR: Don't do it.

The only way I would buy that waste of service is if I was anticipating a major hvac failure. Then I would cancel it the next month. Have two horror stories, too long to type, with AHS.

Here's my take. Even if it's "covered," The repairmen they hire cut the warranty company huge discounts in order to get the business. They then gin up additional repairs outside the warranty coverage that they try and stick you with to make up the difference.

Once had a guy try and charge me $100 to haul off the copper from my HVAC.

20 year mortgage here. This is a secondary related issue to me but here is my opinion.

It depends.

I know that doesn't help but here is what I think. If the seller is buying the first year I lean to accepting the coverage. You are not obligated to renew. Your budget will be tighter right after you buy so this can help smooth out some unexpected expenses.

The older the house the more valuable they are. Any home 12 years or older the odds of a breakdown dramatically increases. Newer homes are less risk so if you decline the policy get the seller to pay that amount in closing costs instead.

If you do get one pay for the most expensive contract the company offers. Even if you have to chip in some on top of the seller. More expensive the policy the less outs they have. That is per a marketing person for one of these companies.

CanyonAg77 said:

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Even if it were 100% legitimate, you're paying the cost of repair, their admin costs, plus a profit for them.

Why?

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Do you self insure your auto as well? Why not?

I have a real estate brokerage and almost every deal we do has a warranty on it. I asked for a warranty on my last home as well and they ended up replacing a water heater for me. They usually only run about $500, so very little risk if you end up needing it.

Yes, I self insure my autos. I carry high deductibles and carry only liability on the older ones.

But car insurance does not cover normal wear and tear. That's what home warranties do. No one is running a red light and taking out my water heater. It has a predictable life span, and I should expect to replace it every so many years.

The warrant companies know this, and put that calculation into their costs. Then they add admin costs, sales commissions,etc., and enough to make a profit.

Why should I pay a warranty company to essentially run a home repair savings account for me, where they skim a little off the top?

Scam