Bought a New-Build Home in Orlando? Rekey Before You Move In

Who had a way in while the house was being built

A new house is a job site for most of its life. Keys and codes get passed around so work can happen when the builder's staff are elsewhere, and nobody keeps a perfect list. By closing day, access has usually gone through some or all of these hands:

None of that means anyone was careless. It means you cannot know who kept a copy, or which code ended up on a clipboard in somebody's truck. Treat every way into the house as unknown until you have reset it.

• The trades: framing, electrical, plumbing, HVAC, drywall, flooring, paint, and the punch-list crew.
• The site superintendent, who may hold keys or codes for every house in the phase.
• Construction cleaners and the final-clean crew before your walk-through.
• The model home and sales team, showing finished homes to other buyers.
• Inspectors, appraisers and both agents, often through a lockbox on the front door.

Construction keys: how they are supposed to switch off

Many builders order locks with construction keying, so the trades can share one key during the build and lose it at handover. Schlage's residential version is called lost ball construction keying. Small ball bearings sit in one pin chamber of the cylinder, and the construction key lines them up so the lock turns.

The switch happens the first time the permanent key is turned in that lock. Normally that is the homeowner key. If the locks were ordered with a master key, Allegion, the company behind Schlage, says the master key does the switching and keeps opening the lock afterward. At the switch, the balls drop into a small hole drilled in the side of the plug, and the construction key can no longer turn the cylinder. Other makers use a pin or a single ball for the same trick.

Why a construction key is not the end of the story

Construction keying does less than most buyers assume, which is why we still recommend a rekey in closing week:

A rekey closes all of those gaps at once. Each cylinder is repinned to a key only you have held, and every older key stops working together.

• Each lock switches over only when the right key is turned in it. A back door or lanai door nobody tried at the walk-through can still take the construction key.
• A master key, if the order included one, switches the locks and then keeps working. Nobody may tell you it exists.
• The homeowner keys sat in the builder's office before they reached you, and no one can say how many there are.
• Not every builder uses construction keying, and the outside of a lock does not tell you which kind you have.
• Kwikset pitches SmartKey to builders as a rekey that takes seconds. Some reset the keys before closing; ask whether yours did, and when.

Builder-grade hardware, in two minutes

Residential locks are rated under ANSI/BHMA standards in three grades, with Grade 1 at the top. Each grade is a tier of performance benchmarks, so a higher grade has passed tougher testing. The builder often picks one hardware line for every house in the community, and the front door does not always get more than a brand's entry level.

Grade alone is no reason to replace a lock that works, and a rekey keeps the hardware. But if a lever already sticks in the humidity, or a deadbolt only throws when you lean on the door, a lock change on the same visit beats rekeying a lock you plan to remove.

The garage: remotes, the outside keypad and the door into the house

In plenty of new Orlando homes, the garage is the door the family really uses, and it has more ways in than the front door.

Remotes handed to the trades, the cleaners and the sales team may still be paired to the opener, and so may the wireless keypad outside. LiftMaster and Chamberlain say to press and hold the Learn button on the opener until its LED turns off, about six seconds, which clears every remote and keypad at once. After that, program back only the remotes you own and choose a fresh keypad PIN. Other brands publish their own steps.

If the opener links to an app, check whose account it is on and remove anyone you do not know. Then look at the garage entry door. With the big door up, it is all that stands between the driveway and your kitchen, so give it a deadbolt on the house key.

A smart lock or hub the builder set up

Some builders hand over a house with a smart lock on the front door, and sometimes a hub tying the lock, thermostat, doorbell and garage to one app. The hardware is yours at closing. The account it reports to may not be.

Before closing if you can, ask who holds the admin account and how it moves to you. Collect the lock's paperwork too. A Schlage Encode ships with a card of backup codes, and Schlage says you need those codes for a factory reset.

For Kwikset's app-connected locks, whoever set the lock up should first delete it from their home in the Kwikset app. A factory reset then wipes the pairings, Wi-Fi settings, users, codes and history, and you set the lock up as new under your own account.

If nobody can say whose account the lock is on, our smart lock installation technicians can reset it, set it up in your name and key its backup cylinder to your other doors.

The alarm panel, the gate and the pool fob

If the house has an alarm panel, find out whether it is monitored and by whom. Open the account in your name, set a new master code and delete every user code you did not create. Ask the alarm company whether there is an installer code and who holds it.

Many new Orlando neighborhoods also have a gate, a pool or a clubhouse run by the HOA. Builder-issued gate remotes, amenity fobs and visitor codes can stay live long after the sales team has moved on to the next phase. In your first week, ask the HOA or its management company to switch off any fob on your address that you never received, issue fobs in your name and add you to the gate list.

Mailbox keys and the sliding glass doors

If your street gets mail at a cluster box, the keys follow different rules. USPS planning standards put lock and key service for cluster box units in a new development on the builder or property owner. The compartment keys come with the unit, and the Postal Service supplies only the master lock the carrier opens.

So your mailbox keys come from the builder or the HOA, not the post office. Ask for them at closing and ask how many were issued. If nobody knows, ask the box owner about a new compartment lock; we can change one on a privately owned unit with the owner's approval. The carrier's lock is never ours to touch.

Then check the sliders. Most patio sliders close with an inside latch and no key at all. Make sure the latch really catches, then fit a pin lock, a foot bolt or a cut dowel in the lower track, something the family will actually use on a door that gets opened all day.

Rekey, upgrade, or both

For most new builds the answer is a rekey of every exterior lock, keyed alike, so one key opens the front door, the garage entry and any back door. Keyed alike works within one keyway. If the builder mixed brands, say a Schlage handleset in front and a Kwikset knob in the garage, the technician swaps a cylinder so everything takes the same key.

The upgrade worth adding is a keypad deadbolt on the garage entry. Kids home from school, a dog walker, a visiting relative: each gets a code you can delete, and the front door stays on your key. Want app control and alerts? Put a full smart lock there instead, with its backup cylinder on the house key.

Our lock rekeying service covers the rekey itself, and the residential locksmith page lists what else we can handle on the same trip.

Lake Nona to Clermont: book it for closing week

New subdivisions keep opening across the Orlando area: Lake Nona, the villages of Horizon West next to Windermere, new phases around Winter Garden, the Narcoossee corridor toward St. Cloud, Clermont, Davenport and Sanford. The list above applies to all of them, and the best day to work through it is the day you get the keys, before the movers and the boxes.

Buying in Davenport or Clermont to rent the house to visitors? Rekey before the first guest and put the front door on a keypad with codes that expire at check-out. Our vacation rental locksmith service is built for that.

What happens when you call, and at the door

Call with a count of exterior locks, the brand stamped on the keys, and whether you want one key for everything or a keypad added. The dispatcher gives you a free estimate on the phone before anyone drives.

The technician arrives in a marked We Do Locksmith van, shows photo ID and asks for yours, plus proof the house is yours, such as the closing paperwork. Before touching a lock, the technician walks the doors with you and goes over the price. If a door changes the job, like a cylinder that is already failing, you hear about it and decide before any work starts.

Each cylinder gets new pins and the keys are cut on the van. Then every new key is tried in every lock it should open, and each deadbolt has to throw fully without a push on the door. The builder's old keys can leave with the technician to be destroyed, and extra copies for the family come from the van through our key duplication service.

Does a rekey affect your builder warranty?

We cannot speak for every builder's warranty, and we will not guess. A rekey leaves the builder's hardware on the door: same lock body, same finish, new pins inside. Kwikset even designs SmartKey locks for owners to rekey themselves. Still, the warranty that counts is the one in your booklet.

Read its section on doors and hardware, and ask the builder's warranty team if anything is unclear. If a lock already sticks or a door will not latch, report it through the warranty process first so the record shows it came with the house. Then keep our invoice with your closing documents: it shows the date, which doors were done, and that the original hardware stayed.