Moving Into a New Flat in Delhi: The First-Week Checklist

1. Photograph everything before you unpack

Ten minutes with a phone, before a single box comes in. Every room, every wall, the bathrooms, the kitchen, the balcony, and close-ups of anything already damaged — a cracked tile, a stained ceiling, a scratched floor, a door that does not close.

This is not paranoia. In Delhi a security deposit is commonly two to three months’ rent, and the argument at the end is always about which marks were there at the start. Timestamped photos end that conversation before it begins. Send a copy to your landlord the same week, politely, so the record is shared rather than just yours.

2. Deep clean before the furniture, not after

Cabinet interiors, the backs of shelves, the floor where the wardrobe is about to stand for three years, behind where the fridge will go. All of it is reachable today and none of it will be reachable next week.

Prioritise the two rooms that carry someone else’s history: the bathrooms and the kitchen. Limescale and old grease need chemistry and time rather than effort, and they are the parts people actually mind. Our move-in cleaning guide covers what a proper empty-flat clean includes.

3. Ask when the water tank was last cleaned

You are about to start drinking, cooking and bathing with water from a tank you have never seen, which was maintained by someone whose standards you do not know.

Ask the landlord or the society. If nobody can tell you, assume it is due. It is a small job and it is the one piece of the flat that touches everything you consume — see our water tank cleaning price guide for what is involved. Check the tank lid actually seals while you are at it.

4. Find the stop valve and the distribution board

Two locations, learned once, in daylight, while nothing is wrong.

• The main water stop valve — usually where the supply enters, plus smaller valves under each basin and behind each WC. Turn each one to check it actually moves; a seized valve is worth knowing about now rather than at 2am. Our emergency plumber guide explains why this is the highest-value five minutes in the flat.
• The distribution board — find it, and check whether it has an RCCB as well as MCBs. Many older Delhi flats have no earth-leakage protection at all, which matters most in bathrooms and kitchens. Our MCB and board guide covers the difference.

5. Test every switch, tap and drain on day one

Walk the flat with a list. Every switch and socket, every tap hot and cold, every flush, every drain, the geyser, the exhaust fans, the doorbell. It takes twenty minutes.

The point is timing: a fault found in week one is a handover issue and usually the landlord’s. The same fault reported in month three is an argument. Test the water pressure on the top floor too — weak pressure is a common Delhi surprise and it is much easier to raise before you have signed off on the flat.

6. Look for the two things that get worse quietly

• Damp. Check the ceiling under any bathroom above, the wall shared with a neighbour’s bathroom, and the corners of external walls. A stain now becomes a problem in the first monsoon — and it is far easier to have that conversation before you move in. Our seepage guide covers telling damp apart from a plumbing leak.
• Pests. Look inside kitchen cabinets and under the sink for droppings or egg cases. An empty flat is the easiest place there will ever be to treat, and treating before your food and boxes arrive is far simpler than after.

7. Batch every small job into one visit

Most of what you pay on a small job is the visit, not the work. Fitting a fan, hanging curtain rods, changing a lock, fixing a sticking door and adding a shelf are five separate call-outs if you do them as they occur to you — and one afternoon if you write them down for a week first.

Make the list as you unpack and book once. Our carpenter day-rate guide covers when a day rate beats per-job pricing, which is exactly this situation.