05/11/2026
How often should you change your locks?
The short answer, it depends.
Have you:
-Given out key copies to people over the years who may have been loose with those copies, or potentially made copies without your knowledge?
-Recently lost a key chain containing your car and house keys?
-Recently evicted a roommate or tenant under less than fortunate circumstances?
-Recently purchased a new home, business, or other real estate?
If you answered yes to any of the above questions then you need a rekey yesterday. Of course every situation varies, but in general, a key change is a good idea for all of these scenarios.
For anything else that comes up, like repairs or replacements, repair or replace as needed! The only thing changing your keys will do is stop any keys you don't know about from working. It's not something that's done for maintenance but rather from necessity and saving costs. If you haven't answered yes yet, it all comes down to one last question.
Are you comfortable with where your key situation is at after reading this?
If you finally answered yes, then rekeying the locks should be the last thing on your mind. You should be trying to identify that weird new bird that showed up on your feeder.
Now, if you mean change the locks in the sense that you replace them, as previously stated, replace them as needed. If your latch isn't retracting all the way into the door, it's a good time to replace it. Turning is rough or the hardware seems to bind, that's another red flag it's getting too worn. The signs are usually pretty easy to feel and see when they come up.
Have an electronic combination lock with a numeric keypad? How are those buttons looking? If the 4 you've probably been pressing repeatedly show wear, that lock isn't very secure anymore, it's gone from having 10,000 potential combinations to 24. Where it get's scary is that of those 24 possible combinations (less if you use a digit twice), 23 of them are usually quickly eliminated by the owner's use of birthdays or numbers people who know them could easily guess. If you get to pick 4 digits for a combination code, pick 4 random digits that have zero meaning to you or anyone in the household and commit them to memory. This greatly improves your security in one easy step. Now, It'd take a while for someone to run through 24 possible combinations with timeouts programmed into most smart locks, but by scale it's much more achievable than 10,000 potential combinations.
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