Home Buying FAQs: Should I change the locks on my new home?
When you buy a new home, one of the most exciting moments is at the closing table. The second the sellers hand over the keys to your new place, it’s hard not to do a little chair dance, knowing that you’ve achieved home ownership.
Before you get too attached to that ring of keys, consider whether or not you should change the locks on your new home.
Here’s our take on the subject
Changing the actual locks is expensive, so we won’t ever recommend that unless the locks are broken. Instead, hire a professional locksmith who can come in and rekey all of the locks. Bonus! They can make every exterior lock work with just one key. No need to have that Schneider keyring on your hip to unlock everything.
Why go to the trouble?
In a nutshell, you don’t know who has a copy of the keys to your home. As diligent as sellers might be about getting all of the keys to you at closing, they will have forgotten at least a couple. The key they left with the neighbor next door. The key that the builder had in a contractor box (and who knows how many people could have made copies of it). The key they forgot they hid in that rock in the garden. If the house was ever used as an AirBnB, you definitely want to call a reliable locksmith to change the locks and quickly.
While changing your locks is not top of the list critical, in our opinion it’s an important thing to add to your moving checklist.
