Buying or Selling a Home

5 Things You Should Do Before Moving Into Your New Home

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Chances are, if you’re reading this, you’ve just purchased a new home. Congratulations! You’ve successfully found a place you love, made an offer, closed on the home, and picked up the keys… now it’s time to move, right? Hold your moving boxes for a moment! You can save yourself some time and potential headaches by doing the following five things before getting settled into your new place!

Get Acquainted with the Breaker Box and Shut Off Valves

Let’s start with the least fun item on this list: getting familiar with your home’s breaker box and water shut-off valves. Unfortunately, the times when you need to know where these are in your home are the worst times to not know! Either you’re in an unlit home, you’re experiencing flooding, or some other minor disaster has occurred. That’s why it’s a smart idea to go through your home and check out where they are and how they work before you actually have to use them.

During this time, it’s a great idea to check for plumbing leaks. You’ll need to dedicate two hours of time where there will be no water use in your home, which is why it’s a good idea to do this before move-in day. Take a look at the home’s water meter. For two hours, don’t use any water, and then check your meter again to see if there’s been a change. If there has, you’ll need to hire a plumber to come out and help you find the source of the leak. If not, your home is leak-free!

Clean and Paint

Walking into a new home is always a wonderful feeling, but it can soon feel overwhelming as you begin to move boxes into the space and try to organize them. Before you begin putting your things in their proper spots, get cleaning! While you should be cleaning and maintaining your home regularly, doing a large deep clean before moving into the home can help the moving process feel a bit less daunting. This means cleaning the carpets, cleaning out cabinets and closets, and cleaning the walls, especially if you’re planning on painting.

Painting before you begin moving furniture into a space is also helpful. By painting before you move in, you don’t have to stress about relocating large pieces and waiting for walls to dry before putting them back. Paint your ceilings and walls before moving in and you’ll feel one step ahead as you get settled into your new space.

Do Routine Maintenance


As much as you’ve like to believe that your home’s previous owners left their systems and appliances spic and span for you, most of the time in the rush to move, sellers don’t do simple routine maintenance tasks. Get these items out of the way before you move in to be on top of the routine maintenance tasks.

You should be cleaning your washer and dryer (especially your dryer to prevent home fires), vacuuming the coils underneath or behind your refrigerator, cleaning your evaporative coils on your air conditioning unit, and changing out your HVAC filter.  

Purchase a Home Warranty Plan

If you didn’t get a home warranty plan from your seller when you purchased your home, there’s still ample time to get one. Landmark Home Warranty offers real estate pricing on home warranties up to 30 days after closing on your home! Even after that, though, you can still purchase a home warranty plan.

A home warranty plan helps to protect your budget when your home’s systems and appliances fail from normal wear and tear. Landmark Home Warranty will pay to have the mechanical parts and components repaired or replaced on the air conditioning, heating, electrical, and plumbing systems of your home as well as major home appliances like your oven and dishwasher. It’s important to purchase a home warranty before you move in just in case your home inspection found something that needs to be repaired that didn’t get completed before closing. A home warranty plan won’t cover items that are shown as defective in a home inspection, but if you have them repaired and send in the receipts to the home warranty, there should not be a problem. So, make sure to get any repairs noted on your home inspection completed before moving in, and then protect your home with a home warranty. Once you’ve purchased a home warranty, you can use it to get a great deal on the next step… re-keying your home!

Re-Key Your Locks

The next thing you’ll want to do before moving into your home is to get a re-key on your locks. You may be looking at the set of keys you were given at closing and thinking, “But I have the keys to my home here, why do I need new ones?” Think back to all the keys you’ve given out over the course of your life. If you’re like most homeowners, you give a copy of your keys to your parents, to your close siblings or friends, to your neighbor who comes to water your plants when you’re on vacation… and so on. Have you ever asked for all those keys back when you’ve moved? Chances are you haven’t, and it’s most likely the previous owners of your home didn’t either. When you just don’t know how many people have a copy of your key (or who those people are!) it’s better to get your locks re-keyed.

Rekeying your locks is a pretty painless process and if you purchased a home warranty plan (specifically from Landmark Home Warranty), you can get a re-key on your door locks and get six copies of the key for only the cost of a home warranty service call fee. You can learn more about the difference between re-keying and replacing a lock as well as a few more reasons why re-keying your locks is a great idea with our re-key guide.  Or, if you already have a home warranty plan through Landmark, log in and open up a re-key service request here.

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