If you’re like many of the homeowners the team at Best Home Services works with, you may not be sure when the right time is to purchase a new home generator. In fact, most homeowners in general know little about when to invest in a new generator — after all, the best time to buy one can depend on your personal circumstances, product prices, and even the time of year.
Picture this: a massive storm in the Southwest Florida region is brewing, or a major hurricane is poised to come your way. You need to prepare before the storm hits and plan out your course of action over the next couple of days. Are you capable of leaving your home, or do you only have enough time to hunker down and brace for a big hurricane to hit? If your answer is the latter, then your best course of action is straightforward: you need to have a plan in place to weather heavy storms with a high-quality home generator.
With a home generator that you pick out yourself or with the help of the electrical repair and installation experts at Best Home Services, you can make storm conditions in the Southwest Florida area both bearable and easy to get through. A generator allows you to preserve your food and water while keeping your home’s important electrical appliances up and running. It also ensures that nothing goes to waste, that nothing spoils, and that you can enjoy basic electricity running in your home even when conditions outside are nasty.
To that end, it’s crucial that homeowners living in and around the Southwest Florida area understand when to buy a home generator. This knowledge can help you save tons of money and avoid unnecessary expenses and the headaches that come with them.
Let’s quickly dive into the basics of buying home generators to understand when it’s time to make this powerful purchase.
Consider the Time of Year
When it comes to purchasing a new generator for your home, keep in mind the rules of supply and demand: don’t purchase something when others need it as much as you. There is, in fact, a best time of the year to purchase a product such as a generator. To know when that time is, though, you’ll need to consider the current season you’re in.
Generally speaking, late Summer and early Autumn are both great seasons during which you can purchase a generator. These seasons typically follow hurricane season in Southwest Florida and provide homeowners with great opportunities to buy a new generator. It’s important that you plan to begin browsing for generators during late Summer and early Fall, since it’s not uncommon for homebuyers to save up to half the normal price of a generator when they buy during these seasons.
Homeowners are, more often than not, also as prepared as they’ll ever be in a given year to purchase a generator when it’s late Summer or early Fall. It’s important that homeowners such as yourself prepare to buy during Fall or Summer so that you can negotiate and receive the largest possible discount on your generator. It’s up to the seller, after all, to sell you the product that you’re looking for while also providing an affordable and reasonable price. Be the most powerful person in the room by waiting until Summer or Fall so that you have wiggle room to negotiate the price you’re looking for.
If you truly want to save as much as possible depending on the time of year, consider waiting a month or two until after hurricane season is over. Even if your particular area in Southwest Florida doesn’t have a heavy hurricane or storm season, the pros at Best Home Services recommend that you wait a month or two after an unexpected major storm to save as much as possible. You’ll always be able to negotiate favorable prices if you wait a month or two to make your new purchase after storm season has passed.
Wait for Public Hysteria to Pass
The best time to buy a home generator also depends on public hysteria surrounding your area’s storm and hurricane season. At Best Home Services, we like to remind homeowners who are interested in purchasing a new home generator that it’s essential to avoid public hysteria when it comes time to buy.
The worst thing that you can do as a homeowner living in Southwest Florida is to give in to public hysteria and go to the worst possible scenario in their minds. In other words, if you convince yourself that your physical safety and well-being are at risk by listening to public hysteria, then you’re less able to negotiate more favorable prices and more likely to pay more than necessary.
Ignore public hysteria and avoid paying whatever price a seller is asking for a generator. Instead, weigh your options as rationally as possible and do your best to avoid what you see on the news or hear on the streets about upcoming storms and hurricanes. The worst time to buy an umbrella is when it’s raining the hardest, after all: keep thoughts of public hysteria surrounding Florida’s incoming storms out of your head, wait for the sun to start shining, and then seize the opportunity to purchase a new home generator — we guarantee that you’ll pay much less in the end.
Decide on Your Preferred Payment Method
The best time to buy a new generator depends on the payment method you’re able to use. Decide whether you’re going to buy your generator with either your credit card or cash. High-quality home generators can be quite expensive and shouldn’t be viewed as an impulsive purchase that you can make on a whim. If you’re serious about preparing for hurricane and storm season by purchasing a quality generator, you need to square away your financial situation and plan things out properly.
It’s important that you decide how to best pay for your new generator, and you need to consider the best features, prices, and models to do so. While you do your due diligence and research these things, do your best to save money in the meantime while you’re outside of Southwest Florida’s hurricane and storm season.
If possible, plan to pay for your new generator with your credit card. If this payment method isn’t in the cards, though, you can still consider paying with cash: when hurricane season has passed and when you’re more likely to have cash to spend on a new generator, divide the amount of money you have by the number of months remaining before storm season comes around again.
Know Whether You Want to Buy New or Used
Finally, you want to decide whether you’d like to purchase a generator that’s used or brand new. This question is important to consider before you make your purchase because there are advantages to buying both new and used generators.
If you have the money to spare then, obviously, it’s usually best to purchase a home generator that’s brand new. New generators often come with guarantees provided by retailers and even include additional store benefits more often than not. New generators are also less likely to break down due to wear and tear since they’ve never been used before.
There are also, however, advantages that come with purchasing a used generator. First and foremost, homeowners nearly always pay less for a used generator than they would for a new one. Homeowners living in Southwest Florida are also more likely to find people buying generators that they used for less than one year because of the area’s regular hurricane and storm season. It’s not uncommon to meet homeowners who purchased a generator for last storm season only to get rid of it when it’s over.
Now that you’re aware of the advantages to getting either a brand new or used home generator, you can more easily decide on how much you’re comfortable with spending. You’re also now in a much better position to decide on your preferred payment method you’ll use to make your purchase. The team at Best Home Services does recommend, though, that you purchase a brand-new generator when possible: new generators, although often a little more expensive than used ones, come in pristine condition and are well-suited to weathering the many storms that hit the Southwest Florida region during hurricane season.
The bottom line: the best time to purchase a home generator becomes available to homeowners who understand what the perfect moment looks like. Search for options after Florida’s hurricane season has passed and stay on the lookout for products stocked in stores that aren’t flying off the shelves because of public hysteria.
The Best Home Services team emphasizes that homeowners such as yourself should take advantage of the situation when you’re ready and save yourself as much money as possible. Living in or around Southwest Florida? Call us today at (833) 263-3097 if you need assistance finding and purchasing a new home generator that you can rely on!
