Just Moved In? Do This With Your Locks First

When you close on a house or sign a lease, you get a set of keys. What you don't get is a list of everyone else who has a working copy. Realtors use lockboxes. Previous owners hand keys to family, cleaners, and neighbors and forget about it. Hardware-store key cutting is cheap and untracked, so copies pile up over the years with no record.

That's the real problem. The lock on your door might be perfectly good. The issue is that the key isn't exclusive to you anymore. You're not buying a new lock to fix a broken one. You're resetting who can open the one you have.

This is true whether you bought a place in Stonebridge Ranch or you're renting an apartment off Eldorado Parkway. New keys handed over almost never mean new locks underneath.

Before you call anyone, do a quick inventory so you know what you're dealing with. Grab your phone and walk the whole place.

Step one: count every exterior door. Front, back, side, garage entry, and any door from the garage into the house. Step two: check the deadbolts and the knob locks separately, since they often take different keys. Step three: don't skip the garage. The keypad on the outside and the door from the garage into your living space are both real entry points. Step four: note the brands if you can see them. Schlage and Kwikset are the two you'll spot most often on North Dallas homes, and both are easy to service. Step five: look for any high-security hardware like Medeco or Mul-T-Lock, which have restricted keys and need to be handled differently.

Write down how many locks you have and whether they all currently use the same key. That number tells you how big the job is.

People mix these up all the time, so let's be clear. Rekeying means a locksmith opens the lock cylinder, swaps the internal pins so the old key no longer works, and sets it to a brand-new key. The lock body stays on your door. Replacing means tearing out the whole lock and installing new hardware.

For a new move-in, rekeying is almost always the right call. The locks you inherited are usually fine. You just want every old key dead and one fresh key that only you hold. Rekeying is faster, cheaper, and you can get every door matched to a single key so you're not juggling a ring of six.

Replace instead of rekey only when the hardware is actually failing, when you want to upgrade to a smart lock or a higher security grade, or when the lock is so worn it sticks and grinds. A locksmith can usually rekey several doors in one visit for far less than buying and installing all-new locks.

If you've never had it done, here's what to expect so there are no surprises. A mobile locksmith comes to you, which matters when you've got a moving truck in the driveway and no time to haul hardware to a shop.

The tech pulls each lock cylinder, replaces the pins to your new key, and reinstalls it. They cut you a working key on the spot and usually a couple of spares. If you want all your doors on one key, say so up front, because that's the whole point for most homeowners. The visit for a typical North Dallas house is often quick, and pricing usually lands somewhere in the range of a service-call fee plus a per-cylinder charge. Ask for the per-lock number before they start so you can decide how many doors to do.

Good time to also rekey the door from the garage to the house. People forget it, but it's one of the most common ways someone walks in.

While you're in security mode on day one, knock out the rest of the list. These take minutes and close the gaps a rekey alone won't.

Change or reset the garage door opener code and clear any old remotes paired to it. Reset the keypad on the garage and any smart lock to a fresh code, since the previous owner's code is probably still active. Find your mailbox key situation, especially in apartments and HOA neighborhoods around Frisco and Allen where the post office or management controls the lock. Check for a spare hidden outside under a mat or in a fake rock, because the last residents may have left one and forgotten. And locate every window lock and make sure they actually latch.

You can rekey some basic locks yourself with a kit if you're handy and patient. But for most new homeowners the math is simple. You've got a hundred things to do during a move, and getting the pinning wrong means a lock that doesn't lock.

Call a licensed, insured locksmith if you have more than two or three doors, mismatched keys you want unified, high-security cylinders like Medeco or Mul-T-Lock, or you simply want it done right the first day. A mobile locksmith covering McKinney and the North Dallas suburbs can knock out a whole house in one visit, leave you with one clean key, and let you get back to unpacking.

That first night, knowing nobody else still holds a working key is worth it. You sleep better knowing you're the only person holding a key that works.