Moving into Parterre:
the first 90 days.

The builder contract is signed, the mortgage is funded, and the keys are in your hand. What almost nobody tells new Parterre owners is that the next ninety days have their own checklist — separate from anything the builder walked you through at closing. Here's what actually needs doing, in roughly the order it comes up.

Most of what follows applies to any new-construction purchase. A few pieces are specific to Parterre: how the HOA onboards new owners during an active build-out, what "landscaping included" actually means on a standard lot, and what it's like to live next to a construction zone that will keep running for years after your closing date. We've written separately about what to verify before you sign the builder contract and about the HOA's fees and rules in detail; this piece picks up where those leave off, once you actually own the home.

The week before you close

The builder's closing coordinator will hand you a folder with warranty paperwork, appliance manuals, and a punch-list form. Before that folder even exists, there are a handful of things worth doing on your own timeline rather than the builder's.

Set up utilities in your name a few business days ahead of closing, not the day of. Xcel Energy (electric and gas) and the relevant water district both take applications in advance, and new-construction addresses occasionally have a lag before they show up correctly in a utility's system — better to find that out with a week of runway than on move-in day. Confirm your trash and recycling provider directly with the HOA management company rather than assuming; in a new phase, service sometimes starts on a delay behind the first closings.

Do a final walkthrough with a flashlight and a notepad, even if the builder's rep is standing right there. Open every cabinet, run every faucet, flip every switch, and test the garage door opener's manual release. Anything you notice now goes on the pre-close punch list, which is a meaningfully easier way to get something fixed than filing a warranty claim after you've already moved boxes in front of it.

Closing day and week one

Closing itself is mechanically similar to any home purchase — title company, signatures, funding, keys — but a few new-construction specifics are worth flagging. You'll typically receive two sets of documents: the standard closing package from title, and a separate builder packet covering the home's systems, the warranty terms, and any HOA architectural guidelines specific to your lot.

Photograph everything before you unpack. Every wall, floor, countertop, and appliance, dated and saved somewhere durable. This sounds excessive for a brand-new home, but it becomes the reference point if a warranty dispute ever comes up about whether a crack or a stain was pre-existing.

Locate your shutoffs. Main water shutoff, gas shutoff, and the electrical panel, before you need them in an emergency rather than during one. New-construction homes vary in where builders route these, and it's a five-minute task during a calm week that saves a frantic ten minutes during a burst-pipe week.

Confirm your mail and address are live. New-construction streets occasionally lag behind USPS and mapping-service updates. A quick check with the local post office in the first week avoids a few weeks of missing mail later.

Registering your warranty — and why the timing matters

We covered the 1-2-10 warranty structure in detail in our piece on builder contract questions: one year on workmanship, two years on systems, ten years on major structural defects. What that piece didn't cover is the registration step itself, which is easy to let slide in the chaos of a move and shouldn't be.

Most builders require active warranty registration within a set window after closing — commonly 30 days, though the exact figure varies by builder and should be confirmed against your specific paperwork. Registering late doesn't necessarily void coverage, but it does create friction: warranty coordinators work off their registration records, and an unregistered file is a slower file when something needs attention. Register the day you close if you can, or delegate it to whoever is handling your move-in paperwork.

HOA onboarding — what actually happens in month one

Parterre's HOA (covered at length in our HOA fees and rules guide) typically reaches out to new owners within the first few weeks of closing with a welcome packet: the CC&Rs, the architectural review process, and instructions for setting up your owner portal account and autopay for dues. Read the architectural guidelines before you plan anything visible from the street — fencing, exterior paint touch-ups, a shed, even certain landscaping changes typically require a design review submission first, and retroactive approval requests are a worse experience than getting ahead of them.

If you don't hear from the management company within a month of closing, don't assume you're exempt — reach out. In an active build-out with new closings happening continuously, onboarding communications occasionally lag behind the pace of move-ins, and dues still accrue whether or not the welcome email arrived.

Landscaping, fencing, and the parts you finish yourself

This is the part of new construction that catches first-time buyers most often: "landscaping included" on a builder spec sheet usually means front-yard sod, basic irrigation, and foundation plantings — not fencing, not a finished backyard, and not always full backyard sod. Confirm exactly what your specific contract included before you assume the backyard is done; it's common for backyard landscaping and fencing to be an owner responsibility, sometimes with an HOA-mandated completion window (commonly within a set number of months of closing).

If fencing falls to you, check the HOA's architectural guidelines before getting quotes — approved materials, heights, and styles are usually specified, and using an approved vendor list (if the HOA maintains one) tends to move review faster than submitting an unfamiliar design cold.

Living next to an active construction site

This is the trade-off nobody puts on the spec sheet, and it's worth naming plainly: buying early in Garden North means living adjacent to ongoing construction for a while — framing crews, concrete trucks, and the general noise and dust of a phase that isn't finished yet. It typically eases as the immediate section around your home sells out and crews move on to the next release, but it doesn't disappear the day you close.

The practical adjustments are minor but real: expect occasional street parking from contractor vehicles, keep an eye on kids and pets around active job sites even if they look unattended, and don't be surprised by early-morning truck traffic during peak construction phases. Owners who bought into Garden North specifically for the early-phase pricing (a trade-off we've written about in pricing against the builder and elsewhere) are making a reasonable trade, but it's a real one, not a hypothetical.

Why this matters

None of this is dramatic, and that's the point. A new-construction move-in doesn't have the resale-home rituals most buyers already know by instinct — there's no prior owner's habits to inherit, no home inspector's punch list to work through before you take possession, no established neighborhood etiquette to absorb by osmosis. Instead there's a builder's warranty clock, an HOA onboarding process, and a construction zone next door that will feel normal faster than you'd expect. The buyers who have the smoothest first year are almost always the ones who treated the first ninety days as their own project, rather than assuming the builder's closing folder covered it.

If you're still shopping and want the practical view of what daily life at Parterre looks like once the move-in dust settles, our piece on schools, commute, and daily life in Thornton is the natural next read.