How a Home Warranty Can Make It Easier to Go from Renting to Owning

Buying your first home is exciting. There are so many advantages of owning a home instead of renting. That money you pay every month? It isn’t going to a landlord; it’s building equity in your home.

Now that you own the place, you can do what you want with your space, including painting the walls whatever color you like, busting out a wall to make a room bigger (do hire a professional for that one, though), and hammering as many nails into the wall as you have pictures to hang. If you feel like it, you can even spray paint graffiti on the floor (but, don’t, okay? you’ll regret it). But with all that fun comes new responsibility.

There’s no one to call in the middle of the night when the toilet overflows. And when the dishwasher breaks? You can get it fixed, get a new one, or do without. And you need to pay attention: that little chip in the paint near the foundation could turn into something bigger before you know it. To ease yourself into all that responsibility, you might want to think about a home warranty.

A month after buying their first home, one young couple was distressed to find a foot of water in their basement after a rain. Nothing had shown up in the rigorous inspection, and the basement didn’t smell musty at all. They were shocked. The repair person who came to take a look started throwing around a bunch of technical terms they had never heard, like “sump pump” and “totally broken.” Luckily, their real estate agent had asked the previous owner to provide a home warranty for their first year in the home, in case anything unexpected happened. The sump pump was replaced for free. Later in the year, they benefited from the home warranty twice more, getting a new dishwasher and a new air conditioner installed. For free.

A home warranty covers all the little things, the ones that can add up to a big thing that derails your happiness with your new home. If the seller won’t include it in your contract, consider buying one for yourself. That couple with the dead sump pump ended up extending the home warranty at their own expense for another year, just to be sure. (They got an attic fan repair out of it, too.) If you’re new to home ownership, a home warranty might just save you money and heartache, so you can really enjoy your new place.

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