Top 10 Tips For Moving Into Your New Home

1. Become familiar with your surroundings. Locate the most important places of interest such as local grocery stores, banks, gas station, gyms, schools and hospitals or health care facilities. Also become familiar with the location of the nearest post office and be sure to fill out a change of address form. Take a drive around town and be sure to check out all that your community has to offer. The local Chamber of Commerce or Visitor Center may be able to help you with this.

2. Have all medical (for your family and pets!), dental, legal and school records transferred and taken care of before you make your move. Ask your doctors if they may be able to refer you to a provider in your new area.

3. Transfer all of your utilities and services before you officially settle into your new home. Schedule disconnection of all utility services at your old home. Be sure that all of your bills are accounted for such as electricity, gas, water, sewage, cable, phone, and internet. Also, change the address to any previous subscriptions you may have been participating in.

4. Stop into the DMV to get a new driver’s license and new tags for your vehicle.

5. Keep all receipts and documentation from your move in a safe place. Be sure to include items from the sale of your old home (if this pertains to you), papers from the moving company or truck you used, and everything you accumulated from the purchase of your new home. Having everything in one place will really help during tax time.

6. Safety First! Change all of your locks and codes to be sure that you and the members of your household are the only people that have access to your new home. Check all smoke detectors, carbon monoxide detectors and make sure that you have a number of fire extinguishers and other safety products somewhere where they are easily accessible.

7. Set up a checking account in your new locations before your make your move. Not every bank is available in every location so be sure that your current bank is available where you are going and if not set up a new account at a different bank. You will need access to money during all stages of your move. Some businesses will accept checks or cards, while others are cash only. So you will need to be sure that all of your money is easily accessible.

8. Make sure that you make a box just for the essentials when packing. You may want to include items like the coffee pot, coffee, snacks, toilet paper, trash bags, cleaning supplies, hand soap or water bottles.

9. Try to label all or most of your boxes beforehand so you will have an easier experience when it comes time to unpack and organize. Double check the amount of boxes and supplies you will need. Keep all valuable or difficult to replace items with you instead of packing them away on the moving truck.

10. Go out and introduce your family to your new neighbors. Other than helping you to boost your social crowd, this will help in case of emergencies and will help you feel more secure in your new surroundings.

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Forbes Deems Rochester One of Best Places to Buy a Home

Forbes Magazine featured this article on May 9th, 2011, deeming our city of Rochester as one of the best places to buy a home right now. Thanks to its great school system and fairly priced homes, it's easy to see why Rochester and its suburbs are attractive areas to settle down.

The article goes on to say "Though home prices in most areas around the country remain weak, the attractiveness of purchasing a home continues to diminish in the wake of the real estate bust. Fears of price erosion, a weak economy and foreclosure dog markets coast to coast.

But not everywhere. In places like the suburbs of Rochester, N.Y., houses look like a great buy. You can get a relatively new 3,000-square-foot home on a nice quarter of an acre lot in a good school district for between $300,000 and $400,000. "The real estate here is very inexpensive, it's about the same as renting and it actually makes sense for families," says Delores Conway, a real estate economics professor at the University of Rochester. "The houses are solid investments with good school systems that are fairly priced.""

To read the article in its entirety, please click here.