The final step is the pleasant one: turning a legal transaction into your home. A fortnight of registrations and services, a few pieces of sensible maintenance, one financial diary entry that will save you thousands — and then the journey is genuinely, completely done. Welcome home.
The registration fortnight
Register for council tax with your new council (they will bill from completion day). Set up energy and water accounts using your day-one meter photos, and sort broadband — installation lead times make this an early call. Update the electoral roll (it also protects the credit file you worked so hard on), your GP and dentist, the DVLA for licence and vehicle, and any remaining subscriptions the post redirection catches.
Year-one house care
Book a boiler service if the paperwork does not show a recent one, and diarise it annually. Find the loft insulation situation your EPC described and price the easy improvements. Live in the house through a season before major works — the sun, the noise, the room you actually use most, all reveal themselves slowly, and renovation money spent after a year is spent far better than money spent in week two.
The one financial diary entry
Your mortgage deal ends on a date in your offer document. Put it in your calendar now, minus six months: that is when you start shopping for a remortgage, because rolling silently onto the lender's standard variable rate is the most expensive default in personal finance. This single reminder is worth more than most of the moving-in advice ever written.
Your action list
Official sources
Practical tips
- Introduce yourself to the neighbours early — they hold the street's institutional knowledge, from bin days to which builder to trust.
- Keep a simple home file: services, trades, warranties, paint colours. Future-you sells the house with it.
What can go wrong
- Skipping the electoral roll update quietly erodes the credit file that just bought you a house.
- The forgotten fixed-rate end date costs the average household thousands in SVR months — it is the single most common post-purchase mistake.
- PropertySquares provides education, not financial or legal advice. Verify current rules and obtain advice for your circumstances before acting.