> And am I able to get rid of homeowners insurance and just have home warranty?

No. Unless you’ve got a very weird version of either, they cover very different things. Speaking generally, homeowners insurance covers things like fire, break-ins, property-related injuries, and other similar (usually larger-ticket) things. Home warranties are for covering things like appliance failures, AC compressors dying, (some) plumbing issues, etc. Smaller items that require a dude with a van to make better, not a bunch of contractors, lawyers, or policemen.

In my experience, a home warranty is a useless waste of money. It's better to set aside cash each month to cover unexpected repairs.

Homeowner's insurance is mandatory and it only used for unforeseen catastrophic events that are NOT the result of negligent maintenance or wear-and-tear.

Home warranties kinda blow from my experience. Our realtor gave us a 1 year trial for free. Our fridge crapped out and they had every excuse not to cover anything. We have home owners insurance. Thank God for it. We had a house fire at the start of the year and the final bill was well over $40k. Very little fire damage, mostly just smoke damage.

no. not at all the same thing.

also, if you have a mortgage then homeowner's insurance is almost certainly mandatory.

Home insurance is optional if your mortgage is paid off.

You know they say they aren't a worthwhile expense and that they are like service contracts, but I had one on a house I owned thirty years ago courtesy of the seller and it was great! It covered a plumbing problem that would have cost me plenty.

That said -- who knows if they pay up anymore?

I used to swear by Square Trade Warranties for tech and large appliances until about ten years ago when they began doing everything in their power to avoid claims (and I have heard they are worse since allstate took over).

Anyhow before you buy a home warranty be sure to check both their trustpilot rating as well as the BBB -- not the BBB rating, even an A+ doesn't mean much because merchants pay them but in the menu of that merchant you will be able to see the complaint history (an account of the issue by the home owner) along with correspondence from the merchant and how they resolved the complaint or didn't.

We often put home warranties on homes at closing as part of inspection resolution. It covers things your insurance won’t. Yes, it’s a for profit company but so are your insurance companies! There are different ones. Some have their own vendors you must use and others let you choose your repair vendors. You might Google home warranty companies and compare coverage/price. If you were happy with your previous one, you might go with them. If they are chasing your business, they may offer you a good deal.

You home contents and structural insurances will cover 99% of any mishaps to your property minus your excess. Have a chat with your insurance company about wider cover first as usually cheaper. These other insurance policies are usually not worth it if you live in a modern home (less than 30 years old).

My dad (82) has had a home warranty for about 30 years. He swears by them. I never did the math, they don’t sell warranties to lose money, but I think having just that one number to call makes it worth it to him. Dude has never paid full for an appliance, plumber, HVAC, etc.

The difference between a home warranty and a home insurance is mostly that the warranty is against internal damages (eg some appliance is broken) and a home insurance is more like if your house burnt down or a tornado or something like that. As far as I know, most people have home insurance and not a warranty

Where are u located, it depends on where your located. It is different per country or state.

we usually advise our users:

a) not insure what they can afford to replace. policies and warranties that offer this are often pre-payment plans in disguise that can lead them to lose out financially. b) insurance is a product designed to benefit buyers only when they use it for loses that would be catastrophic from a financial perspective
c) most home warranties are horrible deals that often end in frustration, money lost, and higher mainline insurance premiums d) something similar to what /u/emandbre said about add-ons

best of luck!

Insurance “add ons” are dangerous because even a valid claim under their terms (towing for example) show up on your CLUE report. Total number of claims, or claims in the early duration of a policy can make shopping for coverage difficult or get you dropped.

If you want an insurance policy on your appliances get one separate from your homeowner’s policy. If the seller is offering a credit I would probably just take it and put the cash in your emergency fund and then you can use whichever company you want and decide on repair vs replacement without some third party dictating it.

My house came with a home warranty that the sellers purchased. First winter, I turned the heat on and it was not working. Air had been working just fine through out the summer and still was, just, no heat. Great, I have this home warranty company that I'll call.

They had one of their preapproved companies come out, I don't recall how many days that took but I know it wasn't that day.

Guy looked around my garage, where the air handler was along with the duct work leading in to the house and basically said the warranty was null and void because of how the ducts were. I had to pay him his service call fee.

All along I could have, and it is what we ended up doing, having the a/c and maintenance guy from my Husbands job come over and he charged us $100 and fixed it, just like that. IIRC, that was $50 less than what was paid to the contractor who did absolutely nothing for me but take my $ under my no cost to me home warranty plan.

These companies are rip-offs. JMO

Insurance isn't meant to cover those systems and appliances. They MIGHT do it, but they'll drop you after your policy is up.

A home warranty is also pretty worthless but of the two, I'd prefer that.

Take the cash value. It will be infinitely more valuable to you than an appliance servicing contract.

Houses break.

Homeowner's pay to repair.

Maintenance is another matter.

Home warranties are NOT insurance.

They are a scheme designed to separate the gullible and uninformed from their money.

i have 8 apartments and have warranty on 4 of them. i got my money's worth out of it because they fixed 2 of my airconditioners that were 3x the price of the annual policy. find a highly reviewed one. i have used choice home warranty and american home shield.

if things aren't breaking monthly i'd consider just finding an honest handyman and plumbing company.

my mom has one. For anything more than basic stuff they give her the run around and they often can't find someone to do the work at the prices they pay, which is often very low.

sometimes it's weeks to get a plumber. other times it's just a couple days. they require pre-approval gor everything or they don't pay.

kinda mixed bag. I dont know if she is ahead of the game with cost.

if you dont mind phone calls to service people it may just easier to handle it yourself.

No. They are not worth it. No 3rd party warranty really is. Think about it this way: the warranty companies are in the business of making money, meaning they need to take in a lot more money than they pay out. So, the average person will end up losing money. They're also very strict about their payouts, with limits and such.

The seller of our house gifted us a home warranty. It paid for a new HVAC system but took hours of work to make happen. Even then, I'm told our case is special.

We didn't renew given bad experiences with their support and them insinuating anything else likely wouldn't be covered since our claim value was so high.

Same, the money I've saved from warranties I could use to just easily replace whatever was broke with something brand new.

Same, the money I've saved from warranties I could use to just easily replace whatever was broke with something brand new.

You can google for different companies that service your state and see what they cover. It will mostly be mechanicals and appliances (refrigerator, sump pumps, water heaters, etc). Some will cover drain line stoppages and small roof leak repair. A warranty isn't something you buy to fix things that are already broken, they won't cover preexisting conditions.

In general, no it isn't worth it. A few reasons --

1. they are in business to make money. Which means, they try to not pay out as much as possible. So things move extremely slow. It can take weeks to get anything done. And when it is done, they often choose the cheapest "duct tape and bubblegum" solution possible over replacement. Even if you do get them to replace, it is often with the cheapest model which may be undersized for what you need, or inefficient.

2. They tend to staff their own people who are generalists not specialists. They don't let you "choose your own repair company". So in this day and age of everywhere being short staffed, the warranty guys really have the bottom of the barrel. And the person coming to look at your a/c, was doing a disposal replacement earlier and a washing machine repair before that. He doesn't really know what he is doing, just hoping to complete the job so that your next call goes to someone else.

3. The pricing often doesn't make sense. You pay a lot each month. But many local repair professionals charge less than the monthly amount to come and look at your problem. And many warranty companies have deductibles. So you spend a lot before ever getting service. If you saved that money, most of the time, you'd end up ahead. It really is only in the case of a big replacement where you make out ahead. But see point number 1.

4. They aren't a "handyman service". If something is currently broken, they won't cover it. Jobs that are too small aren't worth the hassle of the wait + deductible.

In short, if money is tight, you shouldn't spend it on a warranty. Prioritize your list of things to do, try to DIY with YouTube and Home Depot and reddit advice.

• this has been asked perhaps a 100 times so far this year in this forum, now its been asked 101 times
• the answer is always the same: NO

No. You will surely be scammed.

Home warranty companies generally set up their contracts with enough general language that they can deny your claim for frivolous reasons. And worse, they're employing bottom of the barrel contractors to do the work, often unlicensed.

That $2,000 deductible gap is rough like you're basically self insuring a big part of your collection. I was quoted less than $5 monthly for brite.co after I found out that my home owners policy had deductibles like that. The one that covers me got $0 and they actually handle things like mysterious disappearance that my home insurance wouldn't touch.

If you specifically schedule the jewelry, you should be able to choose the deductible and not be subject to the policy deductible.

Plus, it’s something happens to your jewelry, you have a claim you run the risk of your homeowners insurance, not being renewed

A stand alone jewelry policy is a better option than adding jewelry to a property policy. While many property policies do not have a deductible for scheduled items, a loss would still result in a claim that gets reported to the Comprehensive Loss Underwriting Exchange (CLUE). This can lead to increased premiums and make it harder to secure a new home insurance policy in the future.

Stand alone jewelry policies typically have a lower rate per $100 of value, which saves you money upfront. Additionally, most stand alone jewelry policies do not report losses to CLUE.

With my company, that would cost about $5/month to have it scheduled, with a $0 deductible.

You do have a relatively small dollar amount of jewelry, so I wouldn’t recommend making a claim on a piece that is say $1000.

You are not subject to your deductible, but the claims count the same as homeowners claims, at least at my company.

All that to say, it’s probably worth it to get the policy, but I would not make a claim on an individual item.