A Homeowner at Last

Buying a home is a huge undertaking and you deserve credit for your accomplishment, but your work is not finished. Once you move into your new home, you must be sure you receive the assistance you need to maintain your house, pay your mortgage, and take care of your personal needs. Hopefully, you have already followed the suggestions in Chapter Two and developed a solid plan for long-term assistance.

Settling in

You are surely excited and anxious about moving into your new home. If you don't own furniture or other personal belongings, moving may be a simple job. If a few friends, family members, or people from your planning team help out on moving day, it shouldn't be difficult. If you have numerous belongings, you might want to hire professionals to move your things. Moving is a great time to go through your things and donate or throw away anything you don't really need or want. This will make packing easier and will save time trying to find storage room in your new house.

One of your first priorities will be to introduce yourself to your new neighbors. Neighbors can be a great source of information, especially when you're new to a community. Knowing your neighbors and getting involved in your community can be rewarding and fun. Because neighbors tend to look after one another and keep an eye on each other's houses, it is also a way to help protect your home. If you are shy, or unsure about how to introduce yourself, ask for suggestions from your planning team members or the people who provide assistance to you in your home.

If you had been a renter, lived with family, or lived in an agency-controlled situation, there were probably many things that you did not need to be concerned about. As a homeowner, you are now responsible for handling a variety of details related to the house itself. You need to learn about the major systems of the house to do routine maintenance and to handle various emergencies. If you need assistance, you may want to designate one person to see that these things are managed correctly.

Hopefully, you were able to arrange a house tour with the previous owner (as discussed in Chapter Five) and you are well acquainted with your new home. You and each of the people who provide you with assistance must know the location of the following:

• main cutoff valves for water and gas;
• emergency switch for the furnace or burner;
• hot water heater thermostat;
• main electrical switch; and,
• fuse box or circuit breaker box.

A good way to stay organized is to set up a diary, or file, for important information about your house. Place any warranties, owner's manuals, and other documents you obtained from the previous owner in your house file. In this file, store the notes you took on your house tour with the seller. Any time you do repairs, routine maintenance, or improvements, keep track of them in the diary or file.

Take the following steps to ensure that you are as safe as possible in your new home.

Assistance. By now, you have developed a solid plan for receiving the assistance you need in your home. Before you move in, it is a good idea to review the plan with everyone who will be involved in providing assistance. In addition to your regularly scheduled assistance, it is critical to have a back-up plan to take care of emergency situations. Who will provide assistance if the regular person is ill or unable to come? What if you are ill and need additional assistance? How will you handle unexpected transportation needs? Where will you go if you must leave your home temporarily? Are there neighbors who might be willing to be "on-call" for back-up or drop-in assistance?

Emergency numbers. Make a list of emergency telephone numbers. Include the nearest hospital, the local police department, and the fire station closest to your home on your list. If you have neighbors, family, friends, or others you can call in an emergency, add their names and telephone numbers to the list. In many areas, "911" is the emergency number that connects you to the police, fire department, and ambulance.

In addition to these emergency numbers, you need a list of numbers for the people you call frequently, including people who provide you with assistance. Both of these lists should be kept near your telephone. If you have more than one telephone, be sure to have a phone list near each telephone. Having a telephone that allows you to pre-program numbers will make it possible for you to call an emergency number by using just one or two numbers or by pressing one button.

Preventing theft. The previous owner may have given out duplicate house keys, and you have no way of knowing who can unlock your doors. On the day you move in, replace all of the door locks with new ones (the deadbolt variety are the best) and have new keys made. Lock your windows and doors when you are not at home. Never leave valuables, such as a bicycle, outside overnight or unattended during the day.

If you plan to be away for a few days or more, ask a neighbor to keep an eye on your house. You may want to offer to do the same for the neighbor if he or she plans to be away at some time. If you are away overnight, you might consider installing a timer so that an outside light comes on automatically when it gets dark. This will discourage theft because a potential robber will want to avoid being seen, and if lights are on, it will appear as if you are at home. You may want to ask a neighbor to collect your mail and newspapers every day. A pile of newspapers on your step or an overflowing mailbox suggests that a house is unoccupied. Or, if you prefer, the post office will hold your mail at no charge until you return, and the newspaper will stop delivery for the time you are away.

Fire safety. Many accidents may be prevented by eliminating fire hazards and installing smoke detectors and fire extinguishers in your home.

• Smoke detectors. A smoke detector should be installed outside each bedroom door and in or near the living room. Replace the batteries and test your detectors at least twice a year to be sure they are working properly. Many people do this in the spring and the fall when it is time to change the clocks for daylight savings time.

• Fire extinguishers. You should own at least two fire extinguishers, and more if you have a larger house. Hang them so they can be reached easily from the kitchen and from the main living area. In a bigger house, place additional extinguishers in the garage, the basement, and on each floor.

• Fire-prevention inspection tour. In many communities, a fire inspector will come to your home, at no charge, to point out possible fire hazards such as frayed electrical cords, an overloaded electrical system, flammable materials stored too close to a heat source, and clutter in the basement or attic. The local fire department may also have videos and written materials on fire prevention. If tours are not offered, do your own inspection with the help of these materials. You might consider hiring an electrician to do an inspection with you, since many home fires are electrical.

• Evacuation plan. Be sure to have a plan for what to do in case of a fire. Make sure that people who provide you with assistance know the safest and fastest way to get out of the house if there is a fire. If you need physical assistance to get out of the house, be sure that the local fire department is aware of your mobility issues and that your neighbors know that you need extra help. Your evacuation plan needs to include where you and anyone else who may be in the house will meet. For example, you might decide that everyone will meet at the sidewalk in front of the house or in your next door neighbor's front yard.

• Storing valuables. All of your important papers should be stored in a safe place. You may want to use a fireproof box, small safe, or rent a safe deposit box at your bank. Your mortgage documents and the deed to your house are papers you might want to store in your safe place.

Having insurance is an essential way of protecting your home. Make sure your policies are complete and up-to-date. Review all of your existing insurance policies with your insurance agent to be sure you have the right amount of coverage and that you are paying the lowest possible price.

• Property insurance. By now, you have purchased property insurance, since this is required by lenders before closing. In some areas of the country, you may be required to purchase flood insurance, as well. Many property insurance policies include an inflation "rider." This rider, or addition to your policy, automatically increases the amount of money you will be paid to repair or replace your home as its value increases. If your policy does not have this rider, make sure that the replacement value specified by your policy keeps up with the current market value of your house. Otherwise you may not receive all of the money you will need to repair damage to your home. If you purchased a condo or townhouse, the association may insure the structure. If this is the case, you will only need to purchase insurance on your furnishings and other belongings.

• Mortgage life insurance. If you die before you pay off your mortgage, this type of insurance will pay the lender any money that you still owe. If you had a life insurance policy before you purchased your home, it may provide such coverage. Be sure to check before you buy a separate policy. Mortgage life insurance can be expensive and may not make sense for a single homeowner with no dependents.

In the past, you may have lived in a place that was owned and controlled by other people. As a homeowner, you are likely to have much more responsibility and decision-making power than you did in other places you have lived. There will probably be some differences in the way you receive assistance. It is possible that you and the people who provide you with assistance will interact differently (especially if they provided assistance to you in another situation). You will need to define the roles of each of the people assisting you, and spell out how they will work together as a team.

It is crucial that you and the people who assist you have a frequent and practical method of communicating with one another. Whether important news needs to be passed along or you have a concern about how someone is completing a specific task, there must be a reliable means of communicating. In the beginning, it may be a good idea to write down the roles and responsibilities of each person who provides assistance and to have regular weekly or monthly meetings. Perhaps the three most important issues related to your assistance are scheduling, boundaries, and privacy. The following tips should help to ensure that things go more smoothly.

Arranging for assistance when and where you need it can be a difficult chore, particularly if you have a hectic schedule. It may be helpful to choose one person to help coordinate the schedule for all of the people who will assist you.

One of the first things you need to do in your new home is to meet with everyone who will be there on a regular basis and discuss boundaries. Be sure that you clearly state your expectations about your space. You may want to write down your expectations about how the people who provide assistance should behave in your home. The following are some of the things for you to think about as you set up your ground rules. Will the people who provide assistance to me:

• answer my phone,
• answer the door,
• make coffee without asking,
• clean my house,
• eat anything from my refrigerator,
• schedule appointments for me,
• use my shower,
• come into my bedroom,
• have meetings at my house,
• smoke in my home,
• enter without knocking,
• have spare keys,
• bring their pets or children to my house?

Most likely, you have lived with other people and haven’t had much opportunity to be alone. Now that you are living in your own place, you have more opportunities for privacy. Finding the means to get the assistance you need while having privacy may be a challenge, but can be done with a little creativity.

If you have never spent much time alone and this is something that you would like to do, first determine when assistance is needed. Is it necessary to have someone sleeping in your house at night? If so, could this person be a roommate who agrees to be there in case of an emergency? Are there times during the day when you could safely be alone?

If you don’t want someone in your house all of the time, but need to have quick access to assistance, there are a number of ways to accomplish this. One person could carry a pager, or beeper, that you could activate by calling a number on the telephone. A neighbor might agree to be available in an emergency during certain hours of the day or night. A neighbor or friend may be willing to check in with you by phone or in person at mealtimes, when you need help taking medicine, or when you need help moving from one place to another.

An inexpensive monitor, that you can purchase at your local hardware store or department store, may be used to allow a neighbor to hear you during the night without being in your house. There are a number of other electronic devices that automatically call for the police, fire department, hospital, or ambulance when you push a button or dial a telephone number. If you are interested in learning more about these devices, talk with a local independent living center or the agency that provides assistance to you.