New Homeowner Tips- 8 Things to do First! | Homeownership Tips

Thank you for tuning in and welcome back to Homeownership Advice. In today's episode, you'll learn about new homeowner tips, eight things you should do first. My name is Andrew Finney. Please consider me your real estate geek. I'm always here to help. If you need help finding a top agent where you live, or if you simply want to drop me a line and say hi, my contact info is below. Love to hear from you. If you haven't already done so, please go ahead and subscribe to this channel now and like this video. Thank you. So let's go ahead and get into the eight things you should do first when getting a new home. Whether you're a new homeowner or you're a seasoned homeowner, these eight things are always the same and they're what you want to do right away. The first thing you want to do is change the locks. It sounds like common sense because it is common sense, but a lot of people fail to do that. Changing the locks up front is extremely important because you don't necessarily know who all had copies of keys to your new home before you moved in. So it's safest to get the new locks right away. And you should also change the code for your garage door while you're at it and program it into your cars. Should be one of the first things that you do right away as soon as you get the keys to your new place. The second thing that you want to do is actually finding the utility shutoff valves. The last thing that you ever want to be in is inclement weather. And you have either a really bad snowstorm or maybe you're in an area that's prone to earthquakes or prone to tornadoes, prone to hurricanes, any kind of natural calamities like that. And you have an emergency situation, the freeze burst a pipe, or something just happened and you need to know where your shutoff valves are to turn off the water, turn off the electric, turn off all the utilities to the house to help protect your house until the calamity stops. So you want to know where that is because the last thing you want to do is to be in a panic trying to find something and you don't know where to start. So knowing where your shutoff valve is going to save you a lot of time, a lot of headache, God forbid anything like an unfortunate natural disaster or something before you. While you're at it, you should go and test your circuit breaker. Make sure that all your circuit breakers are labeled correctly. Make sure that everything is in working order. Change out what needs to be changed out. Label it so that it makes sense to you and a little Dymo label printer or perhaps even a piece of tape and writing it off to the side will help or magic marker writing it right on to the breaker box itself. All of those things are going to really help you out. So the third thing that you want to do is do a deep cleaning before you move in item number one. Before you move that couch in, you want to clean those floors. Let's say the house has carpets or something. You want to get those carpets either professionally cleaned or go get a steam cleaner or a carpet cleaner and go ahead and clean all of that stuff out. The first thing that you're going to want to do is clean everything, check their fridge, make sure nothing was left behind, check the oven, check the stove, get everything cleaned up so that when you move your furniture in, you can begin making it your own opposed to thinking, you know, I really wish we would have cleaned this house and done a really thorough deep cleaning before we moved in. So the fourth thing that you want to do is changing the toilet seat. I mean, it sounds a little bit funny, but think about it. You know, you don't really know a whole lot about the people that sold you the house. You don't know how clean they were. You don't know what the situation is. Changing the toilet seat out will give you peace of mind that every time you set your derriere down on that toilet seat, it's clean because it was brand spankin' new. It also gives you a good reason to clean underneath the toilet seat, especially back where you have the little hinges and screws that go together, and it's one of those notoriously difficult spots to clean. Changing out your toilet seat, getting that stuff clean, bleaching it out, making it brand new, feel brand new, it will go a long ways to giving you peace of mind in your new home too. The fifth thing that you're going to want to do is changing your furnace filter. You know, you don't know when the last time that the furnace filter was changed, so you want to change it first and change it out right away so you can start tracking a monthly cycle of changing out your furnace filters. A little pro tip here, you know, if you go to the home store, you're going to notice different grades and different expenses for filters. Some of the higher grades, you know, that are available can actually last up to three months, so depending on what it is and what financially makes sense for you, perhaps getting the higher grade is going to save you more money over 12 months than just getting those cheap flimsy once a month changes done, and it's also going to give you better air quality in your house. You want to get that stuff changed out because a dirty air filter can actually restrict the airflow into your house and keep it from running efficiently and raising your utility bills in the process. The sixth thing you want to do is a plan for emergencies. You know, it's one of those things that most of us don't think about right away or, you know, especially when we've got the keys to our home, the last thing you're thinking about normally is an emergency, but it's the best thing to be thinking about. You know, get familiar with where all your smoke detectors and carbon monoxide detectors are. Change the batteries out in them if they're not wired into the house. Test them and make sure that they work so that, again, if something ever happened, then you can rely with a peace of mind of knowing your smoke detectors and carbon monoxide detectors work. The other thing that you want to do is designate an outdoor meeting place in case there is an emergency. Let's say you have a tornado, you know, and maybe you have a basement. Maybe you don't have a basement. You should have a designated area for you and your family and friends where you guys are supposed to meet up that live around you or live in the house to meet up so that you know how to take a quick accounting of everybody, take stock of the situation, and come up with the next game plan. Coming up with the next game plan is actually knowing where your nearest emergency rooms are, where your non-emergency and your non-emergency numbers as well, police departments are, where your fire departments are, and go ahead and program those phone numbers into other than just 911, but you want to program the non-emergency numbers into your phone as well should you need to call them. That way you don't have to think about it in an emergency and sit there and try to google when you're panicked and you're freaking out. That way you just hit fire department, boom, police department, boom, and it's there for you right in your phone already stored so when an emergency hits, you're prepared, you're ready, and by the way, another pro tip, get yourself an emergency preparedness kit. It's going to go a long ways at helping you out and being ready for anything that may happen along with a first aid kit should someone hurt themselves inside of your house, you know, maybe you cut your finger, maybe something happens, but having that stuff on hand is massively important and it's one of those things we don't always think about, but having it there whenever the need arises, then you're ready to go as opposed to freaking out trying to figure out what to do. The seventh thing that you want to consider doing is meeting the neighbors. Now, maybe you're one of those type of people that say, hey, Andrew, I don't really care who my neighbors are. I just want them to leave me the heck alone. Well, you know, I can appreciate that and understand where you're coming from to some extent. Hey, why not? You know, every neighbor, you know, as part of buying a home should have the right to quiet enjoyment of their property and not really being bothered, but here's the thing. Getting off to a good start with your neighbors can actually make it easier for you to love your new home, love your new neighborhood, and it can also be a great source. They can actually be a great source of information for everything that's going on with your neighborhood and community from what the best schools are to what the best place is to eat out at night and getting engaged with them can help keep each other safe because if you know your neighbors, you're familiar with who they are, they're going to look out for you, you're going to look out for them. There's something going down. They're not going to hesitate to call the police because they know where you're at and they know what you're doing and you can do the same for them. The other thing that you want to ask them about is there an online community like, you know, next door these days. It's actually just two words, next door, and you put them together, next door. They have community applications now that help homeowners come together and provide more safety and security for each other. Us do local Facebook groups and pages that should always be private, by the way, a Facebook page just for your community where only residents of your community can go in and you can report suspicious activity to each other, keep an eye on the community together and protect each other and become part of the wider neighborhood at large to help each other. So now the eighth thing is a bit fun. A lot of us like fun, right? So it's throwing a party. If you put, you know, when you're moving in, it's probably one of the like the last things you're thinking about is throwing a party, right? But here's the deal. If you go ahead and say, hey, we're going to have a home warming or a housewarming party in one month after we move in, guess what that's going to give you to do? It's going to give you the motivation and the incentive to go ahead and get your house ready to go by scheduling your housewarming party up front and letting everybody know whether it's one or two months in advance, let everybody know what's going to be going on. And you want to do that prior to the move in date. That way it keeps you on track. It helps keep you on schedule as far as deep cleaning the house. It gives you the motivation and the impetus to keep going to get everything done, get everything moved in, get everything up on the wall with your art and everything else, and have everything ready to go so that you don't procrastinate. And then you're in the house 10 years and you never unpacked that box that you were supposed to unpack, right? So make sure that you do that as well. So now it's your turn. Tell me which one of these eight things to do first are you going to do whenever you get your new home? Are you going to start with changing the locks? Are you going to do that deep cleaning? You can change the toilet seat. Are you going to meet your neighbors? Are you going to plan that party now? Tell me about what you're going to do in the comment section below, along with any other helpful things that you think should be done when somebody first takes possession of a home as well. I'm going to put my contact information up. Feel free to reach out to me if you need help finding a top agent where you live, or if you simply want to drop a line and say, hi, I'd love to hear from you. If you haven't already done so, I'm going to ask you to do three things. Number one, please subscribe to this channel. Number two, please like this video. Number three, please share this video around with someone you know is going to be able to help. Thank you so much for watching today. And between now and next time, I'm wishing you and yours a lifetime full of love, wealth, abundance, and happiness. See you soon.