Home Warranty

HELP! “What do I need to do?”

As a Real Estate Property Manager, one of the first questions we get from the first time real estate investor is, “Should I purchase a Home Warranty for my Rental Home?” As an Investor, there seems to be a false sense of security. “If I spend around $545.00 for the year, I won’t have any other maintenance costs, and everything is covered.” There is nothing further from the truth. Not only will there be additional costs involved, solving maintenance repairs timely has been considerably hindered. From our experience, this is what we know and have experienced about home warranties for a rental property.

Scheduling Repairs are a Nightmare:

Once a Home Warranty is involved, our job as the property manager who handles maintenance repairs is out of our hands. Either the tenant or the Home Owner has to get involved and contact the Home Warranty company and report the service call, pay the out of pocket Deductible, which is usually around $ 75.00 per service call and gets put on a list to be scheduled by another Third-Party Vendor. The Home warranty company then contacts one of their vendors who are not one of our screened and vetted contractors that have been working with our Property Management company for over 20-years and understands our standards of work we expect. The vendor will then attempt to schedule a service call with the tenant. The Service Company has no sense of urgency about the service call such as no hot water or no AC or Heat. Usually, the Service company will contact the wrong party to schedule, or schedule with the tenant and fail to show up at the scheduled time. With so many parties involved in trying to get the issue resolved, this gets very frustrating for the tenant, Owner and Management company. If this happens, the process starts over. Once the Service Company shows up to the property, many times, if the inoperable items is under the warranty guidelines, there is a part or two that needs to be ordered and the tenant will have to reschedule for another day for the service call to be completed. The tenant will usually have to take another day off of work and lose more money.

Upset Tenants:

One of the biggest reasons tenants decide to move out of a rental home is because of maintenance issues. When an Owner purchases a Home Warranty, this causes work orders to take much longer than it should when controls by a Professional Property Manager. Our average service ticket is typically completed within 48-hours unless caused by a scheduling problem with the resident. Turn over is by far the most costly expense an real estate investor can have. When a house becomes vacant, the Owner will incur the following: Loss rents, utilities, make ready, leasing commissions, management fees, along with the standard mortgage, HOA dues, taxes, insurance, etc. Give RentLife Property Management a call at 832-562-3600 or visit us on the web at www.rentlifepm.com. Home Warranty companies are forprofit and will try to save as much money as possible on every service call. These companies are not in the business to lose money.

Conclusion:

Our recommendation is to skip the Home Warranty and hire RentLife Property Management company to manage your rental homes professionally. We have over 22-years of property management experience, family-owned and operated, we are real estate investors ourselves and treat all of our fee-managed properties like it’s one of our own.

Article Written December 27, 2019, by
Mark Kallus Broker/Owner, MPM®, RMP®, TRPM®, TRLS® of RentLife Property Management
14010 Alice Road Tomball, Texas 77377
832-562-3600