Preparing for Your Move

How can you use your time most productively before the moving van arrives?

Bringing closure to your personal matters and relationships in your old community will help enable you to move forward, permitting you to create attachments in your new home neighborhood. Let’s consider some things to look into.

• Finding and interviewing new doctors may be one of your first tasks. Transferring prescriptions and medical records can follow, since you may need them quickly after your move

• Opening new bank accounts will enable you to get up and running quickly in your new locale

• Returning borrowed items will lend peace of mind

• Getting your car ready for the move

• Preparing a first aid disaster kit for the move

• Looking into transferring insurance, memberships, and school records

• Using up everything you can in your refrigerator and freezer so that you don’t have to box it up and watch it melt during the move.

• Calling your new utility companies and begin setting up new services. The new home salesperson should be able to furnish a list for you.

• Preparing yourself for a supplemental tax bill by calling the area’s county tax office (the property will get reassessed after you take possession)

• Purchasing items you may need for the new home like shelf liner, entry mats, and plastic storage boxes, drawer, closet organizers and garage shelving

• Shoppng movers and ask about their policy on breakage

• Pre-packing items not used to stage the home and not essential to your every day existence

• Preparing a few suitcases as if you’re going to stay in a hotel for family member to use for a few nights. Include bedding, eating utensils and cooking items for a night or two.

• Making arrangements to fly Fluffy to your destination on moving day or confine her to a crate so that she is not hurt during the move. Once in your new home, confine her to a small area, like your bedroom, so you can comfort her and lessen her anxiety. You don’t want her escaping by trying to run back to the old house.

• Checking out the many web sites that offer packing advice

• Starting to assemble packing materials. Gather carry-capable boxes and count up how many specialized boxes for pictures, dishes hanging clothes and other specialized items you may need. If expense is a concern, start canvassing stores for used boxes.

• Getting several rolls of packing tape (along with one of those handy-dandy one-handed applicators), permanent markers, moving pads and furniture protectors. Begin hoarding newspapers to pack fragile items and prevent items rattling around within boxes, but don’t wrap anything in newsprint that you can’t eventually wash, since it rubs off. To cushion un-washable items, purchase packing paper that has no print.

• Moving companies may not risk liability by transporting your plants, so ask well in advance about this. If they, do ask how they will be protected from extreme temperatures on a long move. And if you’re moving from outside the state or outside U.S. borders, check into the legality of transporting them at all.

• Taking the time to defrost your refrigerator right before your move, since water damage to other items in the van can occur during the move.

• Trying to find room for valuables for transport in your personal vehicles – this includes jewelry, manageably sized musical instruments and extremely valuable small antiques and art objects.

• If you have small children, making arrangements with neighbors to corral them for moving day so that you can focus on the move and they stay out of harm’s way

• Your mover may be prohibited from transporting firearms or flammable liquids, so ask for a list of items they can’t help you with.

• When labeling boxes, list what it contains, if it’s fragile, what direction it should be facing (up or down) and which room it will occupy

Some builders offer a customer concierge service, such as Vancouver, Washington’s Pacific Lifestyle Homes. Someone is made available at your beck and call when you move into the new neighborhood, according to Matt Goldfain, their marketing director. This person can familiarize you with the neighborhood, help you get your phone and garbage service set up -- and even get you information on the local Department of Motor Vehicles on how to have the address changed on your driver’s license. The concierge typically begins interacting with you once you’ve finished most of your sales paperwork and stays at your service until after the new home orientation.

If you’re moving because of anything work-related, you might want to check with your accountant or with the IRS about the deductions you can take. To qualify for a break, the move must be close in time to your job’s start date and your new home must be closer to your new place of employment than the one you’re leaving – at least 50 miles farther from your old house than your old job was. Check into the precise semantics of this through the IRS. Uncle Sam considers moving expenses incurred within a year of the job change to be eligible – even if you didn’t procure the new job before you left your previous home. There are many more parameters to study to pass the deduction test, but looking into it ahead of time will be useful.

If you do pass their test, the items you may be able to deduct the cost of include:

• some storage and insurance costs

• the cost of packing, crating and moving your household goods

• the cost associated with connecting and disconnecting utilities

• the cost of shipping vehicles and pets

• interim lodging during the moving period (but not meals)

• travel to your new home (check on the current standard mileage rate) including actual gas and oil expenses, parking fees and tolls -- but nothing related to repairs, upkeep, insurance or depreciation of your vehicles

You can’t double-dip by deducting both moving and business expenses for the same purposes, and you can’t deduct anything your employer covers for you -- so try to determine what works in your favor and keep all your receipts.

One of the great things about moving into a newly built home is that you won’t have to clean up someone else’s grunge or remove items either purposely or inadvertently left behind. It’s a clean slate – and yours to either organize or clutter over time. You may thank yourself later on for making a concerted effort to prepare wisely for your move, however, by discarding, selling or giving away anything you haven’t used in several years’ time and watching plenty of reality shows on TV to give you some pointers on how to do that.

Visit Dena Kouremetis' (new) web site at www.realpropertymatters.com!