Rekeying Locks in Newmarket: When You Actually Need It

Nobody wakes up wanting a locksmith. What actually happens is an event — a closing date, a moving truck, a set of keys that never came back — and the uncomfortable realisation that a stranger could walk in. Rekeying locks is the cheap, quick answer to that specific feeling.

This page is about the situations, not the mechanics. If you want to know what a technician physically does to a cylinder, how long it takes and what it costs per door, that is all set out on the lock rekey service page. Here we are dealing with the harder question: does your situation warrant it, and what exactly should you do?

The short version is that rekeying is inexpensive enough that hesitating over it rarely makes sense. A whole Newmarket house is a few hundred dollars once. Weighed against the alternative of not knowing who has a key, that is not a difficult decision.

You just closed on a house

This is the single most common reason our phone rings in Newmarket, and the reason people most often talk themselves out of.

Between listing and closing, keys go to the seller, the seller’s family, the listing agent, the stager, the cleaner, the home inspector, whoever fed the cat during the vacation, the previous owner’s adult children, and often a neighbour. The lockbox code was shared with every agent who showed the place. None of those people is a criminal. That is not the point — the point is that you cannot make a list of them, so you cannot control it.

The seller almost never hands over every copy, because they genuinely do not know where they all went. A house on a 1990s Stonehaven or Summerhill street has probably changed hands twice and been rekeyed never.

• Book the rekey for closing day or the day after, before you move anything valuable in
• Do every exterior door at once — front, side, garage entry, back slider bolt and any garden gate
• Have everything keyed alike so you carry one key instead of four
• Change the garage door opener code the same day; it is a separate job but takes two minutes
• If the house has a keypad or smart lock, delete every existing code rather than adding yours alongside them

We do enough of these that we have a page specifically for it: new home lock change in Newmarket. If the hardware on the house is old, tired or a mismatched set from three different decades, ask about replacing it instead — sometimes the price difference is smaller than people expect.

A tenant has moved out

Rental turnover is the one situation where rekeying should be automatic and unemotional. It is not a comment on the outgoing tenant. It is basic property management, and in a dispute it is the thing that shows you took reasonable steps.

Ontario landlords cannot change the locks while a tenancy is running without giving the tenant a new key, but once the unit is vacant and the tenancy has ended the door is yours. Do it in the gap between tenants, alongside the paint and the carpet clean.

For blocks of units, offices and plazas along Davis Drive and Mulock Drive we usually work through a whole building in one visit, which brings the per-door cost down. See commercial lock change for how that is priced.

A relationship ended, or a housemate moved out

This is the call people apologise for making, and they should not. A departing partner, a former housemate, an adult child’s ex, a roommate who left on bad terms — any of them may still hold a working key, and asking for it back is not the same as getting every copy back.

We handle these quietly. The technician does not need to know the story, will not comment on it, and will not leave anything on the door or in a mailbox. If you are on your own and would prefer a specific arrival window rather than a phone call at the door, say so when you book and we will arrange it.

• Rekey every exterior door on the same visit — a side or basement door left out defeats the whole exercise
• Include the garage entry door, which is the one people forget
• Reset the garage opener code and any keypad codes at the same time
• If a key was given to a building or condo common area, contact management separately — we cannot rekey shared entrances
• If you feel unsafe rather than merely uneasy, ask about high security cylinders so keys cannot be copied at a hardware store

Keys were lost or stolen

A lost key on its own is an inconvenience. A lost key attached to something that identifies your address is a different problem: a wallet, a purse, a car fob with the registration in the glovebox, a gym bag with a tag on it. In that case treat the keys as compromised and rekey the same day.

Stolen keys are always urgent. So is a break-in where the intruder had the run of the house — a bowl of spare keys by the door is one of the first things taken, and it is often the reason a second entry happens a week later.

A contractor, cleaner or agent never gave the key back

Renovations mean handing keys out. A general contractor gets one, and then the electrician, the tiler, the painter and the flooring crew all get access through him. When the job finishes there is a polite exchange about keys and, in practice, one or two copies stay in a toolbox or a truck door pocket.

The same happens with cleaners who change staff, dog walkers, house-sitters and real estate agents who kept a copy after a listing expired. None of it is sinister and all of it is untraceable.

• Rekey when a renovation finishes rather than while it is running
• If work is ongoing, fit one cheap cylinder as a “job key” and rekey back to your own key at the end
• Ask the contractor how many copies were cut — the honest answer is usually “I don’t know”, which is your answer
• For businesses, this is exactly what restricted keys solve: they cannot be duplicated without authorisation

If keys keep escaping, the fix is not rekeying more often. It is a keyway that cannot be copied at a kiosk. Read our high security lock upgrade guide for how that works.

Too many keys, too many years

The quiet version of this problem has no dramatic event behind it. You have lived in the house since 2009. Over that time you cut a key for your parents, one for the neighbour who watered the plants, two for teenagers who have since moved out, one that went to a house-sitter and one you genuinely cannot place. There is a drawer with four unlabelled keys in it.

Nothing has happened. Nothing may ever happen. But you have lost track, and a rekey resets the whole thing to zero for a couple of hundred dollars. It is a reasonable thing to do every five to ten years even with no trigger at all, in the same way you replace smoke detector batteries without waiting for a fire.

A good time to do it is when you are already booking a locksmith for something else — fitting a deadbolt on a door that has none, or adding a smart lock to the front. The service call is already paid for at that point.

What it costs and how fast we can be there

Typical arrival to a Newmarket address is 20 to 30 minutes. For anything that feels urgent — a stolen set of keys, a door someone else can open tonight — call rather than book online, and say it is urgent. We run 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

These ranges are typical for Newmarket and the surrounding towns and include the service call and cut keys. Overnight, weekend and statutory holiday attendance carries a premium. We confirm a firm price on the phone before dispatching a technician.

What you get on the visit

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