Security When Moving House
Ewan Clerk • 23 June 2021
Do I Need To Change My Locks When Moving House?
You don't have to change your locks when moving house, it's up to you whether you do or not! Helped by CraftLock Ltd locksmiths Solihull residents have chosen to have their locks changed on new homes they moved into this year. There are good reasons many of them have had:
- Unless the house is a brand new build, it has obviously been around a long time. In turn many different families may have occupied it, each with individual family members owning keys, copying keys, losing keys, mis-placing them or lending them. If the locks have never been changed, you simply don't know where all the keys are and they could be ANYWHERE! If they have ever fallen into the hands of someone with criminal tendencies, there is a big danger to your property. Would your insurance pay out if someone lets themselves in with a key to steal your belongings?
- New build houses have spent months being un-occupied with keys in the hands of workers finishing the home. It's not unknown for keys to go missing in these situations, and it only takes one out of hundreds of workers to have bad intentions and a whole street of new builds has compromised security. You should normally have three new keys for each lock in a newly built house - check if they are missing. Savvy householders on a new build street will get their locks changed by a locksmith straight away.
- Rented accommodation sometimes has a high turnover over of occupiers. Tenants and landlords both have an interest in ensuring that keys are not mis-used or even sold on for illegal sub-letting. Restricted key locking systems can help with this to a great degree in order to gain accountability of the system but sometimes a complete change of locks and keys will be necessary.
- Again in rented accommodation, large numbers of maintenance people over the years will have signed out keys and had independent access to a property - these people are often selected for trustworthiness as well as their skills and are brilliant hard working people, but unfortunately one or two out of hundreds will be rotten and they will have been able to copy keys which they can mis-use themselves or sell to someone else.
In summary, if you are very very confident the previous occupiers of a house have accounted carefully for their keys, you are fine, but there are a lot of good reasons to just go for safety first and get a lock change from a trustworthy MLA Approved Locksmith like CraftLock Ltd.
If you find this kind of damage, it means you need anti-snap locks:
