Category: Home

For today’s guest post on buying a home warranty, please welcome Dividend Power.

The last two houses that we bought were older ones. The first house we bought was built in the 1980s and the second one in the 1990s. Both were good houses and well built. Older houses are also in more mature neighborhoods making them more attractive. However, there are often concerns about aging appliances, roofs, plumbing, electrical, and other systems when buying an older house. In addition, the cost of repairs or replacement can run into hundreds or thousands of dollars. As a buyer, you can often get the seller to include a home warranty for the first year as part of the deal. However, what about the second year, or suppose you have been in a house for a decade? Is it worth buying a home warranty in that case?

What is a Home Warranty?

A home warranty is typically bought at the time of a home purchase. It provides a warranty on major appliances along with plumbing, heating, and electrical systems, and roofing. Major appliances include furnace, air conditioner, water heater, dishwasher, oven, stove, garbage disposal, and garage door opener. Other appliances can be included on an optional basis. A home warranty is valuable if the home purchased is old and has old appliances or systems. In general, a home warranty will cover the service and repair of major appliances and systems. A home warranty may also cover replacements of major appliances.

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Buying a new home can be a necessity, a dream come true, a financial investment, or a combination of any or all of those reasons. Despite the groups of people out there that don’t want to own any home for any reason, home ownership is still a big part of the American dream, as it has been since the days of the pioneers.

Think about it for a second. Have you ever seen any of those old movies where the wagon trains rumbled across the country and hundreds of folks loaded up a covered wagon, risked their life and limb, and tried to start a new life out west somewhere? Part of that new start always involved building a future with a new home at its core. I still believe that rings true today, minus the wagon train part of course. So now that the pandemic is winding down and life is beginning to resemble what it was way back in the beginning of 2020, is this the right time to buy a new home that you have been waiting for?

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Although I am a homeowner and have been for the past 40 years, I can still remember the days when I was a renter. While renting wasn’t so terrible, I do wish I had learned some of the things about renting that I know now that would have saved me time, money, and peace of mind. Hopefully, you can use this knowledge to save when you rent an apartment.

Rental prices aren’t set in stone, even in highly competitive markets, so elbow grease and negotiation skills can yield hefty savings. One of the priciest cities in the country, San Francisco, today has an average price of a one-bedroom apartment of nearly $4,000 (!), so knowing a few tricks can definitely help.

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We all hear the news about climate change as well as the weird and sometimes disastrous weather patterns that seem to happen almost every day in some part of the world. It used to be cold in the winter and hot in the summer. That’s not always the case anymore and the temperatures here in New Jersey sometimes seem like they’re 60-something degrees almost all year round. I may be exaggerating, slightly, but the weather has changed. When I hear some weather guy reporting that the temperatures in September were the warmest ever recorded for the month, and that they’ve broken the record now seven out of the last seven years, we have to admit that global warming is having an effect, don’t we? But sometime that effect is bad winter storms, and you need to prepare by winterizing your home.

That’s one reason I finally opened my wallet a few years ago and got the ball rolling on getting a new front door along with a storm door! I was finally ready (after freezing my rear end off for several years) to pull the cord and fix it. It has paid off in keeping us warmer and saving on our heating bill, enough to make me feel really foolish that I didn’t do it sooner.

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