It’s a frigid Friday night in February in small-town Utah, and Conner Mantz and his wife, Kylie , are doing what they do pretty much every night: padding around in sweats, making pasta , talking. Usually about running. Lately, also about pregnancy, as Kylie is a few months in with their first—as are at least two of their neighbors. But tonight’s riveting topic? Home warranties.

Apparently, there is a crack in the ceiling of the couple’s new house. I don’t see it, but luckily, Kylie did, mere days before the one-year warranty on their four-bedroom, 4,500-square-foot new build in a master-planned community runs out.

I can’t help but notice, though: It looks like they just moved in. The kitchen as bare as a hotel kitchenette. A stack of cardboard boxes still unpacked. The bright-white interior is blank, save for a wooden sign propped on a table that reads “as for me and my house we will serve the Lord” (Joshua 24:15).

And an “art TV” presiding over the living room.…