What To Do After Getting The Keys To Your New Home

Congratulations on getting the keys to your new home! All those weeks of waiting have been worth it. But nobody ever really tells you what you should do next.

You need to make sure several things are in place, and tell a few people about your move. While some are more urgent than others, ultimately all of them need to be done, and the sooner the better.

In the meantime, you might want to set up a redirect for your post to make sure you don’t miss anything.

What to do on the first day

The first thing you need to do once you get the keys is take the gas and electric meter readings. (Water, too, if it’s metered.)

This is so you can set up your utilities accounts and only be billed for the energy you use. Take a photograph of the meters. Date-stamped versions will be useful if the supplier queries the opening reading.

Meters may be housed separately. The Property Information Form you got from your solicitor will tell you where each one is. You may need a special meter box key to access them. The seller should have left this for you. If they didn’t, the keys are cheap to replace and tend to be a universal size.

You should also have been told who the current suppliers are. If you aren’t sure, use Find My Supplier for gas, and contact your Local Distribution Centre for electricity.

Tell your suppliers about you moving in as soon as possible. You can usually do this online or over the phone.

What to do in the first week

Council tax

Council tax is paid to the local council by every non-exempt household within its jurisdiction. These funds support services like bin collections, schools, libraries, parks, and public spaces, as well as local police, fire, and rescue departments. Typically it’s paid over ten months of the year, with no payments in February and March.

If you don’t know who your local council is, use GOV.UK to find out. You can usually tell them about you moving in online.

You can be taken to court for non-payment of council tax, so it’s important to sort this out!

In addition, you should also check when bin day is. Once you unbox your things, you’ll have a lot of packaging to get rid of. The previous owners might also have left bins full of their rubbish. You don’t want a build-up of waste or recycling! 

Water

Your water supplier is often responsible not just for safe drinking water, but for drainage and sewerage too. 

It’s not possible to choose your water supplier, like it is with gas and electric. You can find out who your water supplier is here. In most cases, you can contact them online.

Communications

Nowadays, setting up broadband is pretty important, especially if you work from home.

Again, the previous owner should have told you who the provider is. You can check by plugging a landline phone in and dialling 150 – this should connect you to the customer service team for the company who supplies your landline. The majority of companies use BT lines, but some, like Virgin, use their own. If you decide to switch from a BT-line company to one that uses their own, or vice versa, you might have to pay for an engineer to come out and change things over.

If you watch live TV or BBC iPlayer, you need a TV licence. Even if you don’t, you still need to tell them. A representative may still come to visit to make sure.

Who do I need to tell about my change of address?

We’ve got a change of address checklist right here.

If you’d prefer it as a document you can download, you can do that here.