It’s only Wednesday. It’s 120 degrees in Phoenix. We have had 11 a/c calls in 3 days. Out of these 11 calls, 8 of the properties have home warranty’s on them.
There is rarely a time when a home warranty is not an issue on a rental home. Let me explain why:
- Cannot easily track the repair
- It is not our vendor
- They do not respect our laws/time frames
- Vendors don’t contact us to inform us of what the problem is
- Home warranty company does not contact us to inform us of what the problem is
- Vendors are contracted with HW for peanuts, work tends to be shoddy
- Cannot control what the vendors tell our tenants
I cannot tell you how many times a HW vendor has gone to a property to repair an a/c only to tell the tenant that the unit needs to be replaced and he is only putting on a band aid. We then receive calls from irate tenants demanding new a/c units that the HW has no intention of replacing.
This week we had two tenants wait 3 days for a call from the HW vendor for their a/c’s that had gone out. The calls to make an appointment never came. I had to spend an entire morning arguing with HW company to get an approval to send my own vendor and get reimbursed. I was finally able to get the approval and my vendor showed up within 3 hours. Although the owner may save some money on the repair itself, they ended up spending the savings on giving a rent credit to the tenant for excessive time without air. The amount of time spent on this was immeasurable. And that was just this week with air conditioners.
This problem exists across the board but is worse when we are under a time constraint. The lack of follow up makes more work for us as Property Managers.
I don’t like being asked whether or not I recommend Home Warranty’s. It depends completely on your perspective. Owner/Tenant/Property Manager, each will have a different perspective. I believe the only way to get around this as a Management Company is to charge for the extra work it takes to deal with warranty companies. I am not sure if that is the solution, but in the meantime I hope it cools off!!