Real Estate Investing #7: Home warranties and absentminded landlording
January 5, 2015
I was reviewing the Investment House paperwork, vaguely remembering that I’ve got an old home warranty on the place and that it’d be good to make sure I renew that in time.
Good darn thing I did!
Old Warranty was expiring in a month’s time. Meanwhile, looking at a quote for the New Warranty company (the one my property manager works with and recommends as being reliable payers), I discovered that a new policy with them would only come into force 2 weeks after they received payment.
The timing on that would have been really annoying if something broke down that would have been covered and I’d missed that crucial detail.
Aside from that, though – there were things from the home inspection that were noted as being broken. Nothing was critical but the tenants were so balky about the inspection and walk-throughs that it completely slipped my mind that I’d wanted to fix those items.
I’m going to have some of the repairs arranged before the warranty is up. I’m sure it’s going to be a bit of an inconvenience to the tenants, but it makes more sense to me to have everything in good working order when it’ll still be covered for a base service fee. Otherwise, the new warranty won’t cover it and then the whole cost may be coming out of their security deposit because it was broken during their tenancy, they never reported or fixed it themselves, and tried to keep us from seeing it during the inspection.
Some of the items may have to anyway, but I don’t feel the need to wait and keep their whole deposit if I can deal with the problem now.
Would you find that unreasonable? As a previous tenant myself, I can certainly understand being annoyed by some scheduling inconveniences, but I’d prefer that over having to pay for the cost myself.
I would be elated if you were doing work on the house without me having to hound you for them. My parents are landlords and so I have been around rentals all my life and it is so beyond frustrating to ask for maintenance when you know you are not being unreasonable and still get ignored.
I even work night shift meaning having people coming in and out usually means a disrupted sleep schedule and I would still never voice frustration.
That’s good to know – I wondered if I was being myopic about it …