Templates for New Homeowners.

You get the keys, and then you get the avalanche: utilities to transfer, an address to change in forty places, a home warranty nobody explained, and a building full of things whose location only the previous owner knows. These are the checklists and workbooks for that year.

The first week is worth more than the next eleven months

Not because it is busy, but because of what is briefly visible and briefly askable — and both close within about a week. That is why the order of this work matters more than the length of the list: almost everything genuinely urgent about a new house is urgent because it gets harder, not because it is dangerous to do later.

The other thing nobody hands you at closing is a number. The mortgage, the taxes, and the insurance escrow are on your closing disclosure. The electricity, gas, water, sewer, trash, internet, the softener lease, and the monitoring contract are on no document you have ever been given. In the setup binder's own worked example, the full set of recurring accounts adds up to $742 a month.

One rule runs through all of these, and it is what makes them safe to print and leave on a counter: record where things are and how the house runs — never an account number, a policy number, a door or alarm code, or a login.

Start free, no signup: the New-Home Move-In Checklist — the ten things to do first and who needs your new address, shown filled in. Then the home shutoff & breaker location map, for the afternoon you walk the house with a flashlight.

New to any of it? Read what a home warranty actually is (and why a seller-paid one may have started months before your closing), or the step-by-step guide to what to do the first week in a new house. Once you are settled, the templates for homeowners hub covers keeping it running.