Most of what goes wrong after a move is not dramatic. It is a meter reading nobody took, a bill going to the wrong address, or a stopcock nobody could find at two in the morning. All of it is simple to deal with in the first week and tiresome later.
On the day, before you unpack
Photograph every meter. Gas, electricity and water, with the serial numbers visible. This is the single most valuable five minutes of the whole move. Estimated readings are the source of most billing disputes, and a timestamped photograph settles them instantly.
Find the stopcock. Usually under the kitchen sink, sometimes in a downstairs cupboard or under the stairs. Turn it to check it moves — a seized stopcock is worth knowing about before you need it, not during.
Find the consumer unit and the gas shut-off. Same reasoning.
Check the smoke alarms work. Press the button on each one. In rented property this is the landlord's duty, but discovering a dead alarm on the first night is better than not discovering it.
Within the first few days
Tell the council you have moved in. Council tax is your responsibility from the day you take possession, whether or not anyone has contacted you. Councils backdate, and a bill covering three unbilled months arrives as an unpleasant surprise. Claim your single person discount at the same time if it applies.
Contact the energy supplier you inherited. You are on a deemed contract with whoever supplied the previous occupant, usually at a poor rate. Give them your opening reading, then switch if you want to — but tell them first, or you will be billed on an estimate.
Set up post redirection if you have not already. Royal Mail charge for it and it is worth the money. The alternative is your bank statements arriving at a stranger's house.
Register with a GP. You can do this before you need one, which is a considerably better time. Some practices have catchment boundaries, so check that the one you want covers your address.
Update the driving licence address. It is free, it takes minutes online, and driving with an out-of-date address on your licence is an offence.
Within the first month
Update the electoral roll. It affects your credit file as well as your vote, and lenders check it.
Tell your insurer. Both buildings and contents. Cover does not follow you automatically, and a claim on a policy listing your old address is a claim you may not win.
Check when the bins go out and which is which. Collection days vary street by street and getting it wrong for a month is a genuinely annoying way to start.
Find out whether you need a parking permit. In controlled zones the grace period for new residents is often short, and the tickets are not.
The ones people forget
The boiler service record. Ask the previous owner or the letting agent. An unserviced boiler that fails in December is the most predictable emergency in British homeownership.
Where the water meter is, if there is one, and whether the property is metered at all. It changes what water costs considerably depending on how many of you there are.
The loft hatch. Look in it. People leave things — sometimes useful, occasionally alarming, and always better discovered in daylight in week one.
Which way the neighbours' fence faces. Not urgent, but the deeds will say which boundaries are yours to maintain, and finding out when one blows down is worse.
Keep the paperwork together
Meter photographs, the completion statement, warranty documents, the EPC, and any guarantees for work done. One folder, kept somewhere you will find it. In three years when something fails, the difference between a covered repair and an expensive one is usually whether you can produce a piece of paper.
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