Why Should I Get My Locks Rekeyed?

when i move into a "new" place, I replace all the locks (often with locks I already own). the new locks are then master keyed to one key.

old man called.. wanted his house rekeyed..

went out, had 9 doors or so.. he was in his 60's.. and lived with mother- 80's..

they were missing items from the house AFTER they had been gone for a bit.. food from the refrigerator, or freezer.. garden tools,, small things.. this was a NEW house..they had it built..

was changing all the locks and came to one he didnt have a key to, and it was worn out from use.. and you NORMALLY dont wear out a Tylo in 8 months of use.. this on a door that they never opened from the outside BTW...

my assumption was one of his 3 neighbors-who could see the house (this in the country BTW) was coming over after they left..and ripping them off..

after getting new keys, the 'pilfering quit' --Shiva--

In 1984, I bought my first house and moved in. Since the seller was moving to a no-pets place, I agreed to adopt their cat. Less than a week after I moved in, I discovered that the seller's two teenage daughters had decided to "visit the cat". They let themselves in with one of the keys their parents had not collected from them. While in my house, "visiting the cat", they also helped themselves to sodas, chips, cookies, and other snacks. To top it off, they didn't see anything wrong with it, since they had grown up in the house!

Needless to say, I changed the locks immediately.

Alan

A friend bought a house that had been listed with several realtors. Soon afterwards she found a realtor's card on the table - the vendor had not told that particular realtor the house had been sold nor recovered the key given to that realtor. I told her that she should change the locks when moving into a new house and she responded that you should not need to have to do this.

LOL... Poor naive lady... Whenever a property changes hands or tenants it should be rekeyed...

PERIOD...

Try and file an insurance claim for damages or replacement of stolen items and you will be laughed at unless you "took reasonable precautions to ensure against theft" (i.e. you changed the locks on the house) after you took possession of it... It is amazing how cheap some people will be, spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on a home only to skimp on the $100 or so to rekey the locks...

Evan, ~~ formerly a maintenance man, now a college student...

A good friend bought an apartment in a large building complex, with a MK system (EVVA GPI), and when he wrote a letter to the manager, asking who was in possession a masterkey, he got the (written!) answer, that there does not exist a MK. So I visited him, we took apart the cylinder, made a MK and visited the manager, handing out the key to him and asked, what the he** this piece of metal is, if not a MK?! He got a bit pale and had to correct his previous statement. We helped a bit to spread the word, and in the following weeks it was really funny to observe that the EVVA locks in most of the doors disappeared, being replaced by non-MK locks. In my friends door lock we just removed the master pinning, so he still had the convenience to use his key for the front door and the storage and parking place, but no MK would open his door any more.

That's the correct answer, in my view. Nothing wrong with being part of an MK system, but the apartment lock should not be mastered.

(In most cases. One of my friends is in a small condo where they've agreed to share access in case of emergency but want to be able to give keys to friends that only open the one unit. But that's a matter of the owners agreeing to accept the additional risk to achieve a specific goal, rather than something being foisted on tenants.)

Yes, in this case it even was 100% legal to modify the lock, because the lock was not excluded from the buyers contract. So my friend was in the crazy situation to own a lock without having the key control over it - the security card is kept at the managements office, and additional keys only can be ordered through them, and they do not sell additional locks, for example to secure the bike with them.

I have two locks in my door, and my own MK opens them both - and I have neighbours who do not like eacht other. So it should be secure to hand out one change key to the first neighbour, the other key to the second neighbour :-) But I only use both locks when I am away for more than one day, and anyway my door could be kicked in without too much hassle, so why bother?! :-) In germany the fire brigades usually have enough experience in forceful entry, so I prefer a smashed door in case of emergency instead of being cheated by a janitor.

you are lucky the property manager didn't press charges against you for messing with his locks without his permission. you had no business disassembling his lock in the first place. also, if a fire breaks out or the apartment maintaince dept. needs to enter your friends apartment? (for some required maintaince) you have now locked the apartment owners out so they can not get into the apartment. if that happens ? you may have some legal business to attend to.

"Ralph A. Schmid, DK5RAS" snipped-for-privacy@dk5ras.de wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com...

Ralph, I missed the fact that your friend bought and now owns the apartment. Please dis-regard my previous response.. news:iC78f.38221$ snipped-for-privacy@tornado.texas.rr.com

my bad

First of all, I have already read your second posting :-) Just want to sort out how things are handled in Germany.

When a fire breaks out or there is a leakage, then in Germany no one starts searching for a key, they just open the door forcefully - the damage from it is usually much less than a fire or a leakage, when time is wasted with searching for the keys.

Required maintenance here is only allowed when you are at home, and only after an announcement a few days/weeks before. When you are not at home, and when there is no emergency, then nobody is allowed to enter without your knowledge. When there _is_ an emergency, see above.

Yes, I do this whenever I move to another place. Nobody can force me to keep the previous lock.

Not in Germany :-) Things are different here, and I think the way such things are handled here is good. Our laws protect your privacy, no matter if you just rent or really own a place.

the same holds true here too. but the property owners get a little cranky and usually want to blame someone for the damage..

different here. they enter appartments at anytime during the day when they have maintaince to do. (spray for bugs, change filters, work on lighting etc) at least in my state of Louisiana.

its seems different in the the states.. the owners can't do anything they want but they do own the property and can do some things...

different strokes, I guess..

g'day

Fire departments in the likes of European Countries, Britain, New Zealand and the like do not seem to have the legal 'clout' with respect to access to keys, etc. as USA fire departments do. While proper egress for public and commercial buildings is required, there is no similar requirement with respect to locks on residences, individual apartments, etc. If an apartment door had to be forced open to deal with a 'burst pipe' or similar emergency, then most probably the insurance company would meet repair costs.

There is a specific problem with local muni owned apartments where tenants are usually less well off, disabled, or have mild mental health problems. Some are extremely reclusive, get ill and die in their apartments and not found for weeks later (medical costs are not an issue as ambulances and hospital care are free). There was a suggestion that these apartments be masterkeyed so the custodian could check on apparently 'inactive' apartments but this found no favour.

That is because fire or safety inspections are covered under an exception to the 4th Amendment which pertains to "Administrative Searches" and allows local fire officials or buliding/heath inspectors access to any premesis during business hours to ensure compliance with fire/health/building codes...

During an "emergency" you have NO RIGHT TO PRIVACY even on private property -- such conditions fall under "exigent circumstances" and allow for your 4th Amendment protections to be violated to ensure that the greater public as well as you are not placed in danger, by officials having to wait for permission to enter from someone authorized to grant access...

As to tenants in an apartment building [in which they DON'T own the unit] they have signed certain rights away to the landlord by entering into the rental contract -- the landlord has what is called IMPLIED CONSENT to enter whenever they have the need to maintain the property which they own for maintenance, improvements to the infrastructure or emergencies [the definition of an emergency for a landlord is very different from the defintion that public safety officials follow] which could be as simple as a water leak from above causing damage, or water leaking from the unit entered to something below...

A RENTER does not have the same property rights over the unit as an owner, however control over granting access to those OTHER than agents of the landlord rests ONLY with the tenant... [i.e. a landlord can not let the police into a unit to search it without the tenant being present, as the landlord doesn't have the right to allow anyone other than its employees or contractors into the unit for maintenance]

It all has to do with fundamental legal differences in privacy rights in different countries -- some Europeans enjoy greater privacy rights than we Americans do, however they do not have many of the same due process rights that we do...

Evan, ~~ formerly a maintenance man, now a college student...