Community Pitch

Home warranty is an insurance that covers repair and replacements costs of home appliances. Home warranties are different from home owners insurance, which is more of a hazard insurance and provides coverage in case of a natural disaster. Home warranty provides covers wear and tear expenses, however unlike other insurances you do not get blanket coverage. The major home warranty providers include First American Home Warranty, Old Republic and AHS.

Premium and the deductible per incident (called service fee) vary and you should review the rates and go with the one that fits your budget. As a rule of thumb, do not go with the cheapest option. Choose the next to cheapest or better yet the median price. Ultimately you get what you pay for, so you have to be careful with cheapest offers.

Older homes, in general, require home warranty policies as they tend to have older appliance reaching the end of the life cycle and replacement costs are higher. Most of new and existing home sales come with home warranty as the new buyer will not want to repair the new house right after the sales. For this reason home warranty is used as a sales vehicle while selling the house. However, the home buyer should have a professional inspector check each and every appliance in the house. It is NOT recommended to use the home inspector recommended by your real estate agent for obvious conflict of interest reasons.

Most of the home warranties will have the annual premium rate of 250 to 550 dollars and 60 to 100 dollars service call fee for every incident. Be aware that only certain set of appliances are covered by the policy. For example, most policies do not cover garage door openers, clothes washer and dryer, etc. Homeowner must get familiar with contract terms and coverage before buying.

Home warranty coverage varies depending on the insurance provider. You should check if you need additional coverage as the basic coverage may not include all the appliances you wanted to cover. It is very important to review the contract before sign it. Do not make payments until you see the contract paperwork. There are some fraudulent companies that make you pay first and then send the contract which would include many restrictions that are not explained up front.

The single best way for most people to lower their energy bills is by buying a garage door insulation kit. This one simple action can seal up the house to such a large degree that it isn’t even funny.

So people I urge you to overcome your laziness and go on down to Home Depot and Lowe’s and pick yourself up a nice little kit. With this in hand, you should have a pretty easy time of insulating garage doors wherever they may be. Father Winter and Sister Summer will no longer be able to penetrate through your garage and into your home. Before you know it you’ll have a bunch of extra cash with which to buy whatever you may want.

Who would have thought that something simple like garage door insulation could be so easy and save so much money? It’s really a win-win type of deal.

If your house is like mine there is just never enough living space.  With the kids, dogs and cats it seems like were always tripping over one another.  My wife and I decided it was time we broke down and did something about it.  We had looked at several different ways to add living space to our house including converting our attached garage to a family room, having a room added on to the back of the house and even considered a screened porch.  After spending many hours at local home shows and touring several different model homes we decided that for our needs a room addition was the way to go.  It offered us the opportunity to expand our living space and home value while giving us the most for our money.  We found a local contractor that specialized in room addition remodeling and building that came highly recommended and the project is now underway.  I can’t tell you how excited we are to see it once all the work has been completed.

If you are planning on selling your home anytime in the future, whether it be in six months or six years, you should always be looking for ways to increase its value.  If you ask any realtor they will most likely tell you that the best way to upgrade your home is by remodeling the bathroom.  This is a huge selling point and can be done for much less than other areas of the house.

The current trend is leaning towards modern style shower units, most of them leaving out the bathtub entirely.  With a beautiful walk in shower enclosure you can bring your bathroom up to date, as well as improve the experience of your daily cleansing ritual.

This simple trick is a great way to add significant value to any home, and can be done relatively quickly and cheaply.

I live in a rural area and my neighbors aren’t right on top of me like in the city. For the most part, this is really nice, but there are some drawbacks. One of which is the fact that I don’t know when folks are coming on to my property and this used to really bother me. I finally solved this with a driveway doorbell.

I didn’t even know what a driveway doorbell was until I was asking about different options to give me better notification before somebody startled me at my front door. the way the man at the store explained it to me is that it uses a pressured tube full of air to know when a car or other heave vehicle drives over the tube. This then triggers a doorbell chime at the house. Tubes, schmoobs. All I know is that I get my warning that somebody is come early enough for me to get ready.