Moving Into Your First Home: The Checklist a Builder Would Write

Most moving-in guides are written by people who have never been in a loft. Photograph the meters, ring the council, update the driving licence. All true, all worth doing, and none of it is the reason a first year of ownership goes wrong.

Here is the part that only lands once the door shuts behind the removal van: every pipe, cable, slate and joist in that building is now yours. No landlord, no managing agent, no warranty on a 1930s semi. If a gutter has been quietly overflowing down the back wall for six years, it became your damp problem at one o'clock on completion day.

So this is the same move in a different order. Sorted by what it costs you to get wrong, rather than by which day of the week it falls on.

The first hour: four isolation points

Do these before the boxes come in. All four take ten minutes, and all four are useless to learn at two in the morning with water coming through a ceiling.

The internal stopcock. Usually under the kitchen sink. Sometimes a downstairs loo, a hall cupboard, or under the stairs. Turn it off and on again now, while nothing is wrong. If it is stiff or weeping, it wants replacing, which is a plumber's hour rather than an emergency. Finding out it has seized during a burst is the expensive version of the same discovery.

The outside stop tap. A small metal or plastic cover in the path or the pavement, usually buried under a decade of turf. It is your only option if the internal one fails, and it needs a long key that costs about a tenner. Find it before you need it.

The gas emergency control valve. Next to the meter. The handle is on when it lines up with the pipe and off when it sits at right angles to it. The National Gas Emergency number, 0800 111 999, is free and staffed around the clock.

The consumer unit. Find the main switch, then press the test button on the RCD. It should trip instantly. If nothing happens, if there is no test button at all, or if the board has ceramic fuse holders with wire in them, you are looking at an installation that predates modern standards and you want an electrician's report before you start hanging anything on the walls. Our rewiring cost calculator will tell you what that end of the scale looks like.

Write all four locations on a card and tape it inside the meter cupboard.

Insurance: the date most people get wrong

Buildings insurance is not a completion job. In England, Wales and Northern Ireland, risk in the property passes to the buyer on exchange of contracts under the standard conditions of sale, which can be weeks before you hold a key. In Scotland it typically runs to the date of entry, but the missives decide it, so ask your solicitor rather than assuming. If you are buying with a mortgage, your lender requires cover from the same point, and plenty of buyers only discover this because the conveyancer chased them for the policy schedule.

Two things worth reading in the policy rather than skimming:

• The lock conditions. Many policies specify five-lever mortice locks to BS3621 on final exit doors and key-operated locks on accessible windows. If the house does not have them, a claim can be refused. This is the real reason to change the locks in week one, and it matters more than the fact that a stranger has a spare key.
• What counts as the building. Fitted kitchens, bathrooms and boilers sit on the buildings policy. Anything you would take with you is contents. The gap between the two is where people find themselves underinsured.

If you are buying a flat, the freeholder normally insures the structure and recharges it through the service charge. Get a copy of that schedule and read the excess, because on a leasehold flat an escape-of-water claim can land partly on you.

The paperwork you have just inherited is worth money

Your solicitor will hand over a pack and most people file it unread. There is genuine value in it, and some of it expires.

• Window and door certificates. FENSA or CERTASS, one per installation since April 2002. Without one, replacement glazing has no building regulations evidence and it becomes your problem when you sell.
• Building regulations completion certificates for any extension, loft conversion, structural opening or garage conversion. A completion certificate is the document that matters. An approved application on its own proves only that someone once intended to do it properly. If the pack is thin, our building regulations checker walks through what should exist for the work you can see.
• Electrical certificates. A Part P notification or an installation certificate for any rewire, new consumer unit or added circuit.
• Gas Safe building regulations notification for a boiler installed since 2005, plus any remaining manufacturer warranty. Almost every boiler warranty requires an annual service by a registered engineer to stay valid, and a missed year usually voids it permanently.
• Guarantees for damp proofing, timber treatment, roofing and cavity wall insulation. Most are transferable, but transfer is rarely automatic. Several schemes require the new owner to register within a set window and some charge a small fee. Do this in the first month or you may find the guarantee died with the sale.
• A new build warranty if the house is under ten years old. NHBC, LABC, Premier and the rest follow the building rather than the buyer, but you should register your contact details. Remember the split: the first two years cover workmanship and are the builder's responsibility, and the remaining eight cover structure only.

One caution on guarantees. A twenty-year damp proof guarantee from a firm that dissolved in 2014 is worth precisely nothing unless it was insurance-backed. Check for a separate insurance-backed guarantee certificate, and if there is not one, treat that wall as unguaranteed.

Alarms: the bit the generic checklists get wrong

You will read that smoke alarms on every storey are a legal requirement in UK homes. That is not accurate, and the inaccuracy runs in an unhelpful direction.

In England, the regulations that require an alarm on every storey apply to rented homes. Building regulations apply to new build, extensions and major alterations. There is no retrofit duty on an owner-occupier at all, which means a house you have just bought may legally have nothing.

In Scotland, it is the opposite. Since February 2022 every home, owner-occupied included, must have interlinked smoke alarms in the main living room and every hallway and landing, a heat alarm in the kitchen, and a carbon monoxide alarm in any room with a fuel-burning appliance. The duty falls on the owner, which is now you.

Whichever side of the border you are on, fit them. Radio-interlinked sealed-battery alarms are about £30 each and go up with two screws. Check the date stamped on the back of any alarm already in place, because the sensors have a ten-year life and an alarm that beeps when you press it can still be past its working life.

A carbon monoxide alarm belongs in any room with a boiler, gas fire, stove or flue, regardless of what the law where you live technically requires.

The admin that has actual deadlines

Everything here has a date attached, which is what separates it from the rest of the list.

• Council tax. Tell the council your completion date. Apply for the 25% single person discount if you live alone. If the house is empty while you renovate, ask what your council does, because policies differ wildly and many now apply a premium rather than a discount on long-term empties.
• Stamp duty. Your solicitor files the return, but the deadline is 14 days from completion and the liability is yours. Confirm in writing that it has been submitted.
• DVLA. Updating your photocard licence is free and takes minutes online. The V5C for every vehicle you own is the one with teeth, carrying a fine of up to £1,000 if the address is not updated.
• Royal Mail redirection. Set it up before the move if you can, since it takes several working days to start. Twelve months is the sensible option. It is the cheapest identity-fraud protection available to anyone who has just moved.
• Electoral roll. Register at the new address. It carries more weight on your credit file than most people expect, and a mortgage or a car loan in year one will be smoother for it.
• Water. Find out whether the property is metered. If it is not, a meter is fitted free on request and usually saves money for households with fewer bedrooms than occupants. Also locate the meter itself, as a jump in the bill is the earliest warning of an underground leak.
• Broadband and TV licence. Openreach installations regularly run to ten to fourteen working days, so book early. Update the TV licence address if you watch live television or iPlayer.
• GP and dentist. Register locally before you need to, not after.
• Bins. Find the collection day and check whether the house came with the right bins. Councils charge for replacements, and the number of houses sold with the neighbour's recycling box is higher than you would think.
• Leasehold only. Your solicitor serves notice of transfer on the freeholder or managing agent. Get the ground rent and service charge details, the buildings insurance schedule, and a copy of the lease you will actually read.

Before the first cold snap

These are the jobs where twenty minutes in September prevents a four-figure invoice in January.

Clear the gutters and check the downpipes. The cheapest maintenance in the business and the single most common cause of the damp patches that turn up in surveys. Watch the downpipes during heavy rain and look for staining on the wall behind them, which usually means a cracked joint you cannot see from the ground.

Service the boiler and run the heating now. A boiler that will not fire is a far better discovery in warm weather than on the first cold morning. While it is running, note the system pressure on the gauge, bleed the radiators, and find the condensate pipe, which is the small white plastic pipe going through the wall. A frozen condensate is the most common winter breakdown in the country and it is usually fixable in ten minutes with a jug of warm water, if you know which pipe to pour it on.

Put your head into the loft. You are looking for four things: insulation depth of around 270mm, no insulation underneath a cold water tank, lagging on any pipework up there, and daylight or water staining on the underside of the roof. Old staining that is bone dry is history. Damp staining is a job.

Lift the manhole covers. Learn where your drains run and whether they are shared with next door. Responsibility for shared drains and lateral sewers transferred to the water companies in October 2011, which decides who pays when something blocks. You also need to know the run before you ever plan an extension, because a drain under a proposed foundation is a costly surprise at the worst possible moment.

Three things only someone who has worked on houses will tell you

Assume asbestos until you know otherwise. Anything built or refurbished before 2000 may contain it: textured ceiling coatings, soffits and fascias, garage and shed roofs, old vinyl floor tiles and their bitumen adhesive, cistern panels, flue components. Intact and undisturbed, it is not a hazard. It becomes one when you drill, sand or break it, which is exactly what people do in their first weekend of enthusiasm. A lab sample test costs around £50. That is the whole precaution.

Buy a detector before you buy a drill. A pipe and cable detector is about £30 and is the only tool on any list here that can stop you killing yourself. Cables do not always run in the safe zones, particularly in houses that have been extended by an enthusiastic previous owner.

Check the incoming water pipe. If the rising main where it enters the house is dull grey, soft enough to scratch to a bright silver with a coin, and swollen at the joints, it is lead. It is common in pre-1970 housing, it is the homeowner's responsibility from the boundary inwards, and some water companies contribute to replacement.

What to buy, and in what order

Ignore the 200-piece homeowner tool kit. Most of it is landfill.

The box you open first. Kettle, mugs, tea, toilet roll, bin bags, hand soap, a torch, phone chargers, any medication, and the bedding for one made-up bed. Pack it last and carry it in the car.

Genuinely week one. A fridge and a washing machine, a kitchen bin, cleaning basics, a bath towel each, blackout blinds or at minimum a temporary blind for any bedroom facing a street light, and extension leads with surge protection.

The tools that earn their place. A cordless combi drill, a pipe and cable detector, a 5m tape, a spirit level, a screwdriver set including small terminal drivers, an adjustable spanner, a radiator bleed key, PTFE tape, a claw hammer, an assorted fixings box with the right plugs for masonry, and a decent head torch. A plunger and a bucket. That list will handle nine out of ten jobs in a first year.

Phase two, once you know the house. Cookware and furniture can wait. Live in it for a season before you commit to how a room should work, because the house will tell you things a floor plan cannot.

If nobody technical ever looked at the place

Plenty of people complete without a builder ever seeing the property. The survey arrived, it was forty pages of amber and no costs, and the sale moved too fast to do anything about it. Or there was no survey at all, because it was a cash purchase, a new build, or a market where hesitating meant losing the house.

That is not a disaster. It does mean you are now the owner of a building whose condition nobody has explained to you in plain terms, and that the first real information you get about it will probably arrive as a leak.

A builder's once-over closes that gap. Send us the survey you never had read properly, or just photographs and a description of the place if you never had one. You get back a written view of what actually needs doing, what can wait five years, what the realistic cost is, and in what order to spend the money. We sell no building work, which means we have no reason to tell you the roof is finished when it has another decade in it.

Book a builder review for £59, and if you have the survey sitting in a folder unread, send it through here instead.

If your question is smaller than that, ask us one thing for free. One defect, one photo, one paragraph, no charge.