Rekey or replace: the decision that actually matters at turnover
A turnover almost never needs new locks. It needs new keys — and those are two different jobs with two different bills. Rekeying keeps the lock body, the finish and the door prep exactly as they are, and changes only the small brass pins inside the cylinder so that the old key no longer lifts them to the shear line. Replacing throws away hardware that is often still perfectly serviceable.
Replacement earns its cost in three situations. The first is a cylinder that has already failed mechanically — a plug that wobbles in its housing, a cam that slips, a keyway so worn that two different keys will turn it. The second is a grade downgrade you inherited: a builder-grade knob lock doing the work a deadbolt should be doing. The third is a finish that has gone past cosmetic into structural, which on this coast means pitting deep enough that the plug binds.
Everything else — lost keys, an unreturned copy, a tenant who moved out on bad terms, a contractor who kept one “just in case” — is a rekey. Same lock, new key, a fraction of the cost, and no repainting around a differently sized rose.
Inside the cylinder: what a rekey physically changes
A standard pin tumbler cylinder holds a stack above each cut on the key: a bottom pin that rides on the key, a spring pressing down, and a driver pin between them. When the correct key is inserted, every bottom pin is lifted so that the gap between bottom pin and driver pin lines up exactly with the shear line — the seam between the rotating plug and the fixed housing. Only then does the plug turn.
Rekeying means removing the plug, tipping out the old bottom pins, and fitting a new set whose heights match the cuts on a different key. The springs, drivers and housing stay. A five-pin residential cylinder has five stacks; a six-pin has six. Nothing about the door changes, and no one can tell by looking.
This is also why a rekey is genuinely secure rather than cosmetic. The old key is not merely deactivated in software somewhere — the physical geometry it was cut to match no longer exists inside that lock. It will enter the keyway and it will not turn.
Two practical notes. First, a badly worn key copied at turnover propagates its own wear: we cut new keys to code where we can, not by tracing the tired one in your pocket. Second, if a cylinder has been rekeyed many times over the years, the plug chambers themselves can wear oval, and at that point we will tell you plainly that the cylinder is finished.
The keys you cannot account for
The honest starting point for any turnover is arithmetic. How many keys were cut for this unit since it was built? Nobody knows. That is the whole argument for rekeying on every change of occupant rather than on suspicion.
Keys leave a property in ordinary, blameless ways. A tenant cuts a spare for a partner, then they separate. A dog walker holds one for eight months. A neighbour keeps one for parcels. A previous owner's cleaner still has the one from four years ago. None of these people are villains, and every one of them holds a working key to a door someone else now sleeps behind.
Collecting keys back at move-out is worth doing and proves almost nothing. A returned key confirms that that key came back. It says nothing about copies. The only thing that closes the question is changing what the lock will accept.
Keyed alike: one key for a whole unit
Most rentals accumulate keys the way a junk drawer accumulates batteries. Front deadbolt, front knob, back door, side door into the garage, shed, gate. Each was installed at a different time by a different person, so each has its own key, and the tenant carries six.
Keyed alike means pinning every one of those cylinders to the same key. It is done at the same visit as the turnover rekey and adds very little to the work, because the plugs are already coming apart. The tenant carries one key. You keep one key. Lost-key events drop, because there is one thing to lose instead of six.
There is a real trade-off and you should hear it: one key opening everything means one lost key compromises everything. For a single-family rental that is usually the right call. For a property where a gardener needs the gate but not the house, it is the wrong call, and what you want instead is two groups — house keyed alike, outbuildings keyed alike separately. We will pin it either way; we just want the decision made deliberately rather than inherited from whoever installed the last lock.
Day one: what a new tenant should actually be handed
A clean handover is a short list, and getting it right removes most of the after-hours calls that follow a move-in.
- Two working keys per person named on the agreement, cut fresh, not the previous tenant's originals.
- A key for every exterior door — including the one nobody uses, because the day they need it is the day the main door fails.
- The mailbox key, tested in the actual box rather than assumed.
- Any gate, shed or garage side-door key, labelled.
- Written confirmation of how many keys exist and who holds them.
What should not be handed over is a key stamped “DO NOT DUPLICATE.” That marking carries no legal force in Florida and no hardware store treats it as a barrier. If a property genuinely needs copy control, that is a restricted keyway with patented blanks and a signed authorisation list — a different product with a different cost, and one we are happy to discuss for a portfolio.
Finally: test every key in every lock before you leave, with the door both open and closed. A key that turns a cylinder held in your hand can still fail in a door whose latch is fighting a misaligned strike.
The key record, and why a landlord wants one
A key record is a boring sheet of paper that settles arguments. It lists the date of the last rekey, how many keys were cut, who received each one, and which doors are keyed alike. Ours is left with the invoice.
Its value shows up later. When a tenant reports a break-in with no forced entry, the record tells you whether a key could plausibly have been out there. When a unit changes property managers, the record travels instead of the folklore. When an insurer asks whether the locks were changed between occupants, you have a dated answer instead of a recollection.
It also stops the slow drift that turns a portfolio into a mystery: three units on the same street quietly keyed alike because a maintenance tech reused a bitting, and nobody noticing for five years.
What fails between tenants on a Gulf Coast rental
Salt-laden air does not respect a rental agreement. Within a few miles of the water, external hardware ages on a schedule that surprises owners used to inland property.
Brass and bronze go first at the interface between dissimilar metals — a steel screw through a brass rose, a zinc-alloy lever on a stainless spindle. Corrosion swells at that junction and locks the parts together. Deadbolt throws stiffen because the bolt is dragging on a strike box that has grown its own crust. Key fob buttons on keyless entries turn tacky and then stop registering.
Humidity is the second front. A timber door that has spent a summer with no air conditioning running will have taken on moisture, grown across the width, and moved the latch out of line with the strike. A tenant then reports that “the door doesn't lock,” which is almost never the lock: it is a latch bolt that no longer meets its hole.
The turnover visit is the right moment to catch all of this, because the unit is empty and the doors can be worked without an audience. We check throw, alignment, screw purchase into the frame, and whether the cylinder turns with one finger or with a grimace.
Mailbox, shed and second-entrance keys
Turnovers fall apart at the edges, not the front door. The mailbox is the classic. Many properties around here use a cluster box or a wall-mount box with a small cam lock, and those keys drift out of the set within a couple of tenancies. Where the box is privately owned, a cam lock is quick to change and inexpensive. Where the box is part of a postal cluster unit, the lock is not ours to touch and the tenant deals with the postal service directly — we will tell you which situation you are in rather than guessing.
Sheds and gates are the second gap. Padlocks left outside on this coast rarely survive two tenancies with their keys intact; the shackle seizes in the body long before the lock is picked. A weather-shrouded padlock in a corrosion-resistant body, rekeyed to match the property, solves it for years.
The third gap is the garage side door, which is often the weakest exterior door on the property and the one nobody inspects. It frequently carries a knob lock alone, hung on a hollow frame, with screws barely biting. That is worth fixing once, properly, between tenants.
Interior privacy locks and the door that jams at six in the morning
Bedroom and bathroom sets are privacy locks, not security locks, and they are designed to be released from outside with a small tool through the face. They fail in two ways that generate calls.
The first is a spindle that has worked loose so the outside knob spins without retracting the latch. The second is a push-button or turn-button mechanism whose return spring has given up, leaving the latch locked with nothing to release it. Both are cheap to correct at turnover and expensive at seven on a Sunday with a child on the wrong side of the door.
While we are inside, we also check that no interior door has been fitted with a keyed cylinder. Keyed locks on bedroom doors are a genuine hazard in a fire and a recurring source of avoidable emergency calls.
What we need from you before we start
For a turnover rekey we need proof that you are entitled to authorise work on the property — ownership documentation, a management agreement, or a lease naming you as the owner's agent — plus a photo ID. This is not bureaucracy for its own sake. It is the line between a locksmith and someone who changes strangers' locks on request.
Beyond that, three answers speed the visit enormously: how many exterior doors, whether you want everything keyed alike, and how many keys should exist when we drive away. If the previous tenant has already gone and you are not certain which key fits what, say so — that is normal, and sorting it out is part of the job.
If a lock is already seized or a key has broken off in a cylinder, mention that on the call. It changes what comes off the van.
Where this brand works
We are a mobile operation covering Hurlburt Field, Wright and Ocean City. Work is done at the property; there is no shop counter to visit. The line is answered around the clock, and the number on this page is the number that rings.
Pricing is quoted in full on the phone before anyone is dispatched — the whole figure, not a service fee with the real cost revealed on the doorstep. If we cannot help with something, we say so on the call rather than driving out to tell you in person.
Hurlburt Housing Locksmith is a licensed and insured locksmith company operating in Florida.