Should I Rekey After Buying A House In Kenner?
Yes, and rekeying is almost always the right version of it. Nobody can tell you how many copies of the old key exist, and rekeying kills every one of them in about 15 to 25 minutes a cylinder while leaving your hardware on the door. Full replacement is only needed if the hardware itself is worn, corroded or too low a grade.
Closing day, and somebody hands you an envelope of keys.
Count them. Now count the ones you were not handed. That is the number you cannot know, and it is the entire reason this question exists.
Who might still have a key?
This is not paranoia. It is arithmetic. Over a normal ownership, keys go out to:
- The previous owners, and their adult children
- A parent or sibling who watered plants during holidays
- Cleaners, dog walkers, babysitters
- Contractors — the fence, the roof after Ida, the HVAC company
- Estate agents and anybody at an open house
- Neighbours who held a spare
- Previous tenants, if it was ever rented out
The seller hands over what they were given. Nobody has ever been able to account for the rest, and a decent seller will tell you so.
Rekey or replace?
| Rekey | Replace | |
|---|---|---|
| Kills every old key | Yes | Yes |
| Keeps your existing hardware | Yes | No |
| Time per door | 15–25 min | 30–60 min |
| Relative cost | Lower | Higher |
| Upgrades security grade | No | Yes |
| Fixes worn or corroded hardware | No | Yes |
For most house purchases the answer is rekey. There is a longer breakdown in rekey vs replace locks if you want to work through it properly.
Get everything on one key while you are at it
Keyed alike means the front, back, side and garage door all take the same key. It is done during the rekey and costs very little extra once somebody is already there with the pinning kit open.
The catch is that the locks need compatible keyways. Mixed brands usually means swapping one or two cylinders to match. Worth asking about before the day rather than after.
The doors people forget
Nearly everyone thinks of the front door and stops. The list that actually matters:
- Back and side doors
- The door from the garage into the house — frequently the weakest lock in the building
- Patio and sliding doors, which usually need a different fix entirely
- Any padlocks on gates or sheds
- The mailbox, if it takes a key
The garage-to-house door is the one worth pushing on. Builders fit the cheapest hardware there because nobody sees it, and it is behind a garage door that a lot of people leave open.
The Kenner-specific bit
Before you book anything, put a key in each exterior lock and turn it. If any of them feel gritty, stiff or need the door lifted, say so when you ring.
Salt off the lake corrodes cylinder internals from the inside, and around Laketown and the lakefront we find cylinders that cannot be rekeyed at all because the pins have seized in their chambers. Paying to rekey a lock that is three months from failing is money gone.
The other one: if the house has been through flooding at any point, silt in the cylinders is a real possibility. Sometimes it flushes out. Often it does not.
When to do it
Before you move in if you can, or within the first few days. It is a job that gets postponed for a year because nothing bad has happened yet, which is not the same thing as it being safe.
If the property is standing empty between closing and moving in, do it first. Empty houses with unknown keys out there are the actual risk window.
What about smart locks?
Perfectly reasonable on a main entry if you want codes rather than keys, and codes are easy to change when a cleaner or contractor stops coming. But do not fit one expecting it to be more resistant to force — it is not, and the reasons are in smart lock vs deadbolt. Weather sealing matters here more than the feature list.
The cheapest thing you can do that day
We’ll say the bit that costs us money: if your budget is tight, three-inch screws through each strike plate into the wall stud plus a reinforcement plate does more for your actual security than any lock upgrade. Around thirty dollars of parts.
Forced entry defeats the frame, not the cylinder. Rekeying handles the key problem. Screws handle the boot problem. They are different problems.
Booking it
Tell us how many exterior doors, whether you want them keyed alike, and whether any of them feel stiff. That is enough to give you a proper answer before anyone comes out. Indicative ranges are on the prices page, and the service detail is on rekey locks in Kenner.