Changing Locks Between Tenancies

A tenant hands back two keys. Nobody knows how many were cut over three years, or who has them.

Which is why the lock gets changed at a vacancy rather than at the end of a lease, and why it is worth doing properly in the twenty minutes it takes.

What actually gets changed

Usually the cylinder, not the lock.

A door lock is a body and a cylinder. The body does the latching and the bolting, the cylinder is the part the key turns. Replacing the cylinder changes the key and leaves the working lock alone, which is faster, less costly and leaves nothing to patch in the door.

Replacing the whole lock is for a body that is worn, a lock that no longer suits the door, or a change in the type of locking required.

Rekeying is the third option: the same cylinder, new pins, new key. Sensible across a portfolio because the cylinders stay standardised.

Where it goes wrong in an apartment building

An apartment front door is often part of a building-wide system, and that changes everything about a lock change.

Restricted keyways, where keys can only be cut by an authorised holder against a signature. The point of the system is that a tenant cannot walk into a shop and have a copy made. Fitting an ordinary hardware store cylinder to a door in that system removes the protection for the whole building, and it is the single most common error at a vacancy.

Master keying, where the building manager's key opens every door and each tenant's key opens only theirs. A replacement cylinder outside the system means the manager no longer has access, which matters at three in the morning when water is coming through a ceiling.

Common area keys, meaning the entry, the carpark, the bin room and the mail. Those are separate from the apartment door and they have their own register.

The rule is simple: establish whether the building has a system before ordering anything. Where it does, the cylinder comes from the system, and that is the whole subject of [key systems and restricted keys](/blog/key-systems-and-restricted-keys).

Hardware the fire doors control

An apartment entry door in a building is frequently a fire door, and a fire door's hardware is certified as part of the door.

Which means the lock cannot simply be swapped for a different model. The hardware has to be approved for that door, fitted without altering the leaf beyond what is permitted, and recorded. A lock change that voids a fire door's certification creates a compliance failure that sits on the building, not the tenancy, and that is dealt with in [fire doors in residential buildings](/blog/fire-doors-in-residential-buildings).

The compliance side of a rental

A rented property has to be securable, which in practice means working locks on external doors and on accessible windows.

Which makes a vacancy the right moment to check the whole envelope rather than only the front door. Window locks that have seized or been painted shut, a sliding door with a broken latch, a balcony door that only closes if you lift it, and a back gate with nothing on it at all. The window side of that sits with [security screens, window locks and rental compliance](/blog/security-screens-window-locks-and-rental-compliance).

Keeping a record

The part that is always skipped and always needed later.

How many keys were cut and issued. Which keyway and which cylinder, so the next change can be ordered without a site visit. Who holds a key besides the tenant, meaning the agent, the building manager and any contractor with ongoing access. Which common area keys went with the apartment.

Across a managed portfolio that register is worth more than the lock change itself, because it turns every future key question into a lookup rather than an inspection.

Doing it in the vacancy window

A vacancy is short, and a lock change is twenty minutes in a week where plenty of other work has to happen.

Which is why it belongs in the same programme as the paint, the make good and the clean rather than as its own appointment, and why the handover date is the planning constraint, not the lock. That is the whole shape of [end of lease, made re-let ready fast](/blog/end-of-lease-made-re-let-ready-fast).

Ample changes and rekeys locks at vacancies across managed portfolios in the eastern suburbs and inner city, inside the building's own key system, with the make good, paint and repairs run by one team in the same window.