How Home Warranties Could Help Homeowners Save Money on Home Repairs

Owning a home is a lifelong dream for many Americans, but that dream doesn’t usually include risks like the refrigerator suddenly stopping in the middle of a Texas summer.

Homeowners often try to mitigate those risks with homeowners' insurance, only to find that insurance covers the house itself, not the appliances and systems inside it. To solve that problem, homeowners should instead consider getting a home warranty, a policy similar to homeowners' insurance that can help cover home repairs and appliance replacements.

Given that modern appliances are becoming less reliable and more expensive, being able to have them replaced at a lower-than-usual cost may be just the solution some homeowners are looking for.

Modern appliances like smart refrigerators and smart washing machines offer more convenience and customizability than their older counterparts, but their technical complexity comes at the cost of reliability. Having more moving parts means newer devices often have more opportunities for something to go wrong, and go wrong they do, with CNBC explaining that, “From 1995-2005, the average homeowner replaced appliances consistently every 12 to 13 years. Today, it is every eight to nine years.”

This frequency might not be as notable an issue as it is if they were cheap to fix or replace, but unfortunately, that’s not the case. The national average washing machine repair costs $180, and washing machines themselves can cost between $400–1,000 to replace. If homeowners are spending that much on their washing machines alone every 8 years or so, it’s little wonder why homeownership is so expensive.

Home warranty companies like Select Home Warranty offer a means of proactive home protection, mitigating the costs that can come with routinely repairing systems in an aging house or replacing newer appliances.

In practice, a home warranty company covers some or all of the cost of a repair or replacement, provided the repair or replacement meets certain criteria. These can vary across companies, but one rule most home warranty brands agree on is that they’ll only cover devices or systems that have broken down due to normal wear and tear. Depending on the company and the policies they offer, some may not cover sudden incidents like natural disasters.

Since home warranty companies can differ so much in terms of coverage, it’s important that homeowners consider all options available to them.

For example, one valuable quality to look for in a home warranty provider is their trustworthiness, as companies with a history of building trust with their clients are often known to be especially responsive and supportive when helping their customers solve problems.

Determining whether a company is trustworthy is a different issue, but it can help to start by looking into who they partner with. Select Home Warranty, for instance, recently announced its partnership with the Dallas Cowboys football team, suggesting that the company is trustworthy enough for one of the most popular sports teams in the U.S. to stake its reputation on them.

Homeowners living in older houses or using newer appliances should consider whether it would be more cost-effective in the long run to repair wear-and-tear damage out of pocket or with coverage from a home warranty. Emergency situations in particular may warrant a home warranty, as over a third of Americans would currently struggle to pay a sudden $400 expense.

Regardless, home warranties are a proactive way to keep some of the most important parts of a household operational, making them an investment to consider at a time when prices only seem to keep going up.