Moving house? Your lock and key security checklist

The physical move — the boxes, the truck, the unpacking — tends to take up all the attention in the lead-up to moving day, but one of the more important jobs on the list has nothing to do with furniture. Moving into a new home means you don't actually know, and usually can't know, exactly who else might still hold a working key or access code to the property, and sorting that out early is worth treating as a priority rather than an afterthought.

The core issue is simple: previous owners, former tenants, family members, cleaners, tradespeople and even a property manager may still have a key that works on your new front door, along with a garage remote or an alarm code that was never handed over or reset. None of this implies anything sinister about the previous occupants — it's just a normal, common gap that opens up whenever a property changes hands, and the only reliable way to close it is to change what the existing keys and codes actually operate. As a new owner-occupier, you are legally entitled to change your locks as soon as settlement is complete, with no restriction on doing so, which makes it one of the more straightforward jobs to tick off in the first few days after you get the keys.

Cost-wise, the numbers line up with what's covered in our separate article on rekeying versus changing locks: a call-out fee commonly around $80 to $120, rekeying at roughly $30 to $60 per lock, or full replacement hardware at roughly $70 to $200 per lock if you'd rather upgrade the mechanism itself. For a typical three-bedroom home needing the external doors addressed, an all-in figure somewhere around $300 to $700 is a reasonable planning range. Whether rekeying or replacing makes more sense for your new home depends mostly on the condition of the existing hardware — solid, working locks are usually fine to simply rekey, while old, worn or non-compliant hardware is a good candidate for replacement while you're already having a locksmith out.

The front and back door are the obvious starting point, but they are not the only access worth thinking through. Garage remotes are easy to overlook — many can be reprogrammed or wiped and reissued by a locksmith or the garage door installer, which matters if a remote from the previous owner is still floating around somewhere. Any alarm system should have its PIN and user codes reset, along with keypad codes for a lockbox or gate if one exists. Side gates and garden sheds often have their own separate padlocks, worth changing or rekeying at the same time rather than treating as an afterthought, and a letterbox lock is easy to forget entirely despite controlling access to your mail. Window locks and latches are also worth a proper check — they're one of the more common points of entry for opportunistic break-ins precisely because they get far less attention than the front door.

If your home insurance requires deadlocks compliant with the Australian Standard AS4145.2 for burglary cover to apply — a common condition, covered in more detail in our article on smart locks versus traditional deadlocks — moving-in is also the natural moment to confirm the locks you're installing or keeping actually meet that standard, rather than discovering a gap only when you need to make a claim. And once new locks are in, getting a couple of spare keys cut and leaving one with a trusted person nearby is generally a better arrangement than hiding a spare key outside the property, which is a well-known weak point rather than a genuine hiding spot.

If you've bought into a strata or apartment scheme, it's also worth remembering that anything affecting a shared or fire-rated entry door usually needs sign-off from the building or strata manager before you touch it, even though the unit itself is yours — this is covered in more detail in our smart locks article, but it's easy to overlook amid everything else moving day involves. And if you're insuring the contents of the new home for the first time, letting your insurer know once the locks are sorted, rather than assuming the previous owner's arrangements simply carry over, closes one more loose end from the move.

None of this needs to happen on moving day itself, but tackling it within the first week, before the boxes are even fully unpacked, closes the gap while it's freshest in mind. This article is general information rather than advice for every property or state. Our directory lists Australian locksmiths by area if you're ready to get your new home's locks sorted.

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