Has anyone changed their house number after moving in?

[Zukini]

We moved into a new home, purchased from the builder a couple weeks ago. It's the same master planned community, just a different section. Thing is our new address is let's say, 5555 Happy Place and there just so happens to be, in another section of the exact same community, a 5555 Happy Hills. To add to the mix, my husband and the gentleman who lives in the other home have the same (pretty common) first name.

So, the craziness started when we went to get our mailbox key after closing and realized our supposedly new mailbox was stuffed to the gills with mail for the other 5555 Happy residence, not just coupons and mailers but bills, greeting cards, doctor bills, tax forms that they send in January, etc. We put them in a box and DH went over there, introduced himself and exchanged contact information. We also called the local post office and requested a warning be placed on the addresses to prevent more mix ups. Since then we've still received more mail for him (sigh). And we never received our trash cans. Have been calling the city utility service daily this week since we are outside the promised delivery window. They kept saying wait. Frustrated, I called the garbage contractor myself and they, lo and behold, delivered the cans the same week as closing but not to our address. And have transposed my husbands name to that address' account... I'm frustrated enough today, I cannot imagine months and years of the craziness.

So we now are playing with the idea of requesting that the city change our house number to 5553 or 5557 Happy Place, which is not replicated on the other street. Our numbering sequence is generally 4-up or -down so it's possible to go 2-up or -down for our number without impacting adjacent homes or lots on our side of the street. The city engineer at the planning and zoning office was very amenable and said that the change could be initiated with notification going out to all applicable state/local/school/emergency agencies, post office, utilities etc. We would also receive a letter to inform our bank who holds the mortgage and other agencies who don't get an automatic notification. Honestly, we are kind of surprised at how simple it seems to change it, but don't want to underestimate any challenges that may crop up later on. Has anyone done this? Anything to be aware of? I don't want to pay off our home or try to sell and run into some legal or title nightmare because of a numbering change that we initiated.

[mmsmom]

The previous owners of our house changes the house number while they were trying to sell it. I know they went to the township to have it done. Approval was easy but there are a lot of things that need to happen after. Most importantly making sure the new house number is registered with 911. The township automatically sent a letter to the 911 system but it did require some follow up from us though I can't remember why. You also have to make sure the post office is notified. Our experience is that although the local post office and mail carrier know the new number it can take a while for the update to get to all the systems you need it to. Many websites verify addresses when you check out... They are linked to the USPS database but since it can take a while for the updates we had a hard time with deliveries for a while... It would always say address not valid. I think it took about 6-12 months for this to resolve. The other issue was utilities... Same thing; takes a while for new house number to be reflected in system so they can't change the address because they don't see that house number exists. It does eventually work out but I think our electric still shows service at one house number & billing at another because their system was the slowest to reflect changes.

This was all 8 years ago so maybe things are easier now. I would definitely pursue it in your case because even though there are some hassles to go through it sounds like it will be worth it in the long run.

[jerigirl]

I think I would do it sooner rather than later if you plan to do it at all. There was a similar story on our local news last night but in that case, the houses and neighborhood are well established, 30ish yrs old, and the city said it would be very difficult to do at that point.

[mackmama]

I would do it. We had a similar situation and didn't do it and wish we did.

[ahisma]

We looked into it when we looked at a home with a 666 Street Name Rd. address. We didn't buy the house, but it would have been an easy process (so easy that I can't sort out why it had not already been done.)