All Forum Posts by: Derek Janssen

 Well they are in business to make money.  If they lost money, they wouldn't be in business long.  I've had a drier fixed twice, a garage door fixed, and now a fridge on two separate home warranties (that the other realtor paid for).  Considering each service call cost $65 and the home warranty cost ~$500, they are still ahead.  

Bottom line is never again.  My realtor kept saying, well if ur AC unit goes out, it pays for itself.  But what I found out with the fridge is that they will make it so painful and draw it out so long that they are betting on the end user getting frustrated and just calling someone else to get it fixed quickly.  So the "insurance" on my AC unit is actually not effective.  "Maximizing shareholder profit..."

 Understood in that case, it would be useless. A 15 year old house is different tho. U r almost guaranteed to have something break. Their loophole is that they didn’t say how quickly they would fix it. 

 Don’t beat yourself up. This business is ripe with learning situations like this. I call it experience.  It would be boring to go thru life being an inexperienced landlord.

If it were me, I would refi with cash out and make sure the properties still cashflow >$100/month. Keep enough cash in reserves to weather a storm. I would buy more houses. The BRRRR strategy is really popular on this website. I'm a buy and hold guy.

What are your end goals?  Is it 10 houses cashflowing $500/month = $5000/month?  

Figure out what works for you, set a goal for this year and next.  Write down that goal, revise it, look at it twice a week minimum.  What are you doing to get closer to that goal?  What fears do you have that are keeping you from those goals?  

What's funny is that when I was buying a car, I declined the extended warranty and the salesman was asking me why and if I'd had a bad experience with extended warranties.  I didn't take the bait, bc I'm sure any reason I would have given him would have opened the conversation up to negotiation and refuting my experience as "that was a different company".

So get this, Landmark called the contractor doing the repair to ask him if it's worth fixing.  Guess what the guy who is incentivized to fix things is going to say...

$160 wouldn't even get somebody on the phone in CA...

So here's the update.  Found a $25 fridge on craigslist in town that will get us by.  Tenant has a truck and is willing to pick it up.  I'm throwing him $100 for the spoiled food, $100 for picking up the fridge, and $25 for the actual fridge.  I still think I'm out of pocket cheaper than even a used fridge delivered.  Win-Win for tenant and me.

Home warranty is $65 for the visit.  They will lose money on the deal.

Looks like the home warranty my realtor put in the contract is somewhat worthless.  My tenant's fridge was limping along for the last 10 days and finally went out spoiling all their food.  Landmark home warranty offered $100 toward renting a fridge which is basically again worthless.  Apparently they think being without a fridge for 20 days is acceptable.  The only way I would consider home warranties is if I was on site and had an extra fridge and 3 portable AC units that I could deploy the same day.  They were ok for fixing a garage door and a clothes dryer, but anything mission critical - forget it.

Interested.  Will try to coordinate my trip around it.