Congratulations, You Bought a House! Now What?

Buying a house does take a lot of time and effort. The first step is going through the long and sometimes frustrating pre-approval process to secure your financing. Then you have to look for a home. You may have spent weeks or months working with a real estate agent to find the perfect home. Even after you find a home, you then have to negotiate the price, deal with anything the inspection reveals, and more. In the end, it can be exhausting, but you now own your dream home!

Now what do you do?

Get Your Utilities Turned On

You may be anxious to move in, but before you do, you need to get the electricity, gas, and water switched over to your name and turned on. You can't really do much if you don't have lights, so the electricity is a must.

You also may not be able to be comfortable in your new home if you don't have heat or air conditioning. If you have a gas furnace, getting the gas turned on during the winter is necessary. Just make sure you've had the furnace inspected first, especially if the home has been empty for several months. Once you've got your power on, you may want to get the water flowing. You can spend a night in your new house without water, but any longer than that and things become complicated.

If you've moved to a new city and aren't sure who to contact about your utilities, talk to your real estate agent. He or she will likely have all of this information available. Agents often also have information on the various phone, cable, and internet companies in the area, too.

Change the Locks

Some new homeowners immediately change the locks on the house simply because they have no idea if there are any other keys out there. You don't necessarily have to do this, but you can if you want to be absolutely certain you know who has access to your home. You can find new lock kits at many hardware stores, and installing them is fairly easy. All you need is a screwdriver and about ten minutes.

Paint

If you're going to paint your home, do that before you start moving in if you can. It becomes much more difficult to paint your home if you have to do it around stacks of boxes and furniture. It also makes the settling in process much more difficult. If you have a week to get your house painted before you move in, you'll get it done in that week. If you have to move in first and then paint, you may find that you end up doing a little painting here and there. Before you know it, it's been three weeks and you still have a room that isn't finished.

Redo the Floors

The same is true if you're putting down new flooring or if you're going to oil your hardwood floors first. Get that done as soon as you can so you're not trying to do it around your furniture.

Put in a Change of Address

You're going to be out of your old house fairly soon-most people move out within a couple of weeks of closing. That means you'll need to get your address changed over. You'll want to do this as soon as you can because some changes do take a while to go through the system. However, don't change your address until after the closing. You don't want to change it only to find some small detail that causes the deal to fall through. Then you'll have to change everything back.

Hire Movers

If you're going to hire movers, you should get in your reservation as soon as you can. Again, you may not want to make plans before the closing just in case something happens, but you'll want to get your moving team in place shortly thereafter. Some movers do get booked up pretty quickly, so it's always best to get things scheduled as soon as you can.

Once you've finished all of these tasks, you'll be ready to move in and enjoy your new home! If you have any questions about anything, you can always talk to your real estate agent. If you're a part of the LGBT community and want to work with LGBT-friendly agents, you'll find them on www.GayRealEstate.com, a website specializing in LGBT real estate. These agents will be able to help you find the perfect home and provide you with information about utility companies and more once you've purchased your dream house.