You’ve finally secured your new home and are making the big move into it. With such a significant change comes some new responsibilities that you’ll soon need to take care of. You’ll probably have to pay your real estate agent’s big commission cheque for the new place, or perhaps you went at it alone and decided to purchase a home without a realtor, in which case you probably saved thousands. Regardless of whether you are moving with your spouse, your family, or alone, there are a number of things that are important to do right after you move in.
Change the locks
This is the most important thing that you should do right after moving into your new home. You don’t know who has access to the old locks, and I’m sure you don’t want to think about the possibility of someone being able to unlock your door and walk into your house at any time.
You can either replace the lock yourself or hire a locksmith. In most cases it is best to leave the job to a professional locksmith. Afterwards you should ensure you make a few copies of your new key. What’s the next worst thing after a stranger being able to enter your home? You not being able to get in your own home.
So remember, change your locks and consider adding additional securities measures such as a home alarm system or security cameras depending on the area you moved to.
Change your mailing address for billing, credit cards, etc.
Don’t forget this important step! Although this is something you should’ve done prior to moving into your new home, if you haven’t done it yet then you better get started.
All of your mail is going to be headed to your old address, and if someone else is living there they may not care to forward the mail to you.
The new owners may end up throwing out your bills, pay cheques, or important notices and you’ll never know they arrived.
If you ended up forgetting this step up until now, make sure to visit your old home and ask the new owner if they can collect your mail for you to pickup or forward to you until you get all of your old mailing address information changed.
You should also go to your old local post office and ask them to forward all your mail to your new address.
To make sure you got all of your info changed, come up with…
