Ask the seller for his “list”

When you buy a house, there are all kinds of logistics to manage and information to process.  One thing that I encourage my buyers to do at the settlement table (if not before) is, assuming it hasn’t been a very contentious transaction, to ask the sellers for their list of service providers–from the person who mows the lawn and blows the leaves to the plumber  electrician, HVAC guy or chimney sweep they’ve used.  Why?  Well, it’s a least a starting point if you need any of those services to have the names and contact info for people whom the seller trusted. What will you do, especially if you’re new to the area, when you realize there’s a pipe leaking?  Sure, you can google “plumbers”, but you will have no idea who’s reliable, trustworthy or expensive. Second, all houses have idiosyncracies. Sometimes, you may either pay less (for a shorter service call) or even have better success with repairing a problem if the technician is already familiar with the house.  If the HVAC contractor has serviced the heater for the last 11 years, he probably knows that you have to wiggle the knob to get the panel off, for example. So I always recommend asking for “the list”.