Moving Into a New Home? Rekey the Locks First
Nobody knows how many copies of your new front door key exist. Rekeying is the cheapest way to make that question irrelevant on day one.
Written by the Locksmith Vaughan Ontario team, a mobile locksmith service covering Vaughan and the surrounding GTA. Last reviewed .
When you take possession of a home, you are handed a set of keys and told that is all of them. In reality, nobody can promise that. Over the life of a house, keys get handed to relatives, cleaners, contractors, dog walkers, tenants, real estate agents, and neighbours who watered the plants once in 2019. None of those people are villains. The point is simply that the number of working keys to your new front door is unknown, and unknown is not a security setting you want to live with.
Rekeying solves this in one visit
Rekeying changes the pin configuration inside your existing lock cylinders and issues you a fresh key. Every previous key stops working the moment the job is done. The lock body, the deadbolt, and the hardware on your door all stay exactly as they are, which is why this costs far less than buying new locks for every entrance.
Get every door onto one key while you are at it
Most homes accumulate mismatched locks over the years. The front door, the side door, the garage entry, and the patio slider often all take different keys. Since a locksmith is already opening those cylinders to rekey them, this is the ideal moment to key them alike, meaning one single key opens everything. It costs very little extra at this stage and it is a daily quality of life upgrade you will notice for years.
What to cover on move in day
- Every exterior door, including side, back, and garage entry doors people forget about
- The garage door opener codes, which should be reset the same way you would reset a password
- Any smart lock, which needs old user codes and paired phones removed, not just a new PIN added
- Padlocks on sheds and gates, which can often be rekeyed to your new house key as well
- The mailbox, if it has its own lock and the previous owner kept a copy
When you should replace instead
Rekeying assumes the lock is worth keeping. If a deadbolt is loose in the door, the key already sticks or grinds, the finish is corroded, or the hardware is a builder grade unit from decades ago, put that door on the replacement list instead. It is also the natural moment to add a keypad or smart lock on the door you use most, so you stop depending on carrying a key at all.
How long it takes
For a typical house with a few exterior doors, rekeying is a single short visit. With a mobile locksmith it happens at the property, so it fits easily into moving week without another errand on your list. Doing it in the first days is the goal, because the whole benefit is closing the window where unknown keys still work.
