Milpitas neighborhood · 24/7
Hidden Lake Village: condos and townhouses where the gate, the building door and the unit door were keyed by three different people
Condo and townhouse blocks set around shared parking and landscaping: a gate at the drive, a pedestrian gate off the sidewalk, a door for each building, a unit door behind it, and a management company that sets the rules for everything outside your own frame. Nineteen minutes.
4.9 / 5· 207 reviews from Milpitas and the north end of the valley
~19 min
Avg. arrival
$89
Service call
24/7
Availability
The ring is the giveaway here. Four or five brass keys, two of which nobody can identify, cut at different times by different companies for owners who have long since sold. One opens the pedestrian gate, one opens the building door, one opens your own entry, one opens a storage closet or a laundry room, and the fifth is a mystery that everybody has agreed to stop asking about. Nothing on that ring is a system. It is sediment. Getting your own doors onto one key is straightforward at $30–$47 per cylinder, each one after the first at the low end, and the honest limit is worth saying out loud: the doors that serve the whole complex are not yours to bring onto it, and who orders work on those is settled on the call rather than in your doorway.
The gates are where the failures cluster, because they live outdoors and nothing else on the property does. A post moves with the ground under it, a latch drops out of line with its keeper, and a padlock that has hung on a pedestrian gate for fifteen years comes to the end of its life without warning. Half the time the key for a gate went missing two owners ago and the gate has been propped, wedged or simply left unlatched ever since. Putting a gate right is mechanical work and cheap compared with what it holds shut: the latch is realigned, the keeper is moved to where the bolt actually lands, and a cylinder or a padlock that can be keyed to something you already carry goes on at $126–$338 depending on what the leaf needs.
Inside your own frame the choices are yours and the work is ordinary. New pins after a purchase or a change of resident at $30–$47 per cylinder, so any key cut before that day stops working. A worn plug replaced at $126–$338. A keypad at $198–$496 where somebody comes to the unit while nobody is home, a dog walker on a weekday round or a parent collecting a child, because a code can be deleted on the day it stops being needed and a cut key stays a working key wherever it ends up. Keep the metal keyway underneath live and have its key cut at the van the same day, and keep that key somewhere other than inside the unit it opens.
Lockouts split three ways on this property, and which one it is changes how the call starts. Shut out of your own entry, it is $129–$246 with the $89 call-out inside it, picked where the mechanism allows, with identification checked at the step. Standing outside a closed gate with your key on the kitchen counter, the first job is getting somebody inside to bring a technician through, and that is worth starting while you are still on the phone. Shared parking produces the third version, the one where the key is locked in the car two rows over: $106–$199, and $94–$199 to program a remote where the vehicle stands. Evening adds $48 and the hours after midnight $86, both inside the quoted total.
Say whether the door that stopped you is your own or one the whole complex shares, and if it is shared, whether anybody inside can bring a technician through the gate. Give the building number and the entrance, not only the street address, since one address here covers several blocks. For your own door, have identification with the address ready at the step.
Nearby
Over the hill, the same van
FAQ
Asked about Hidden Lake Village
We have five keys and nobody knows what two of them open. Can that be sorted out?+
Partly, and the part that can be is worth doing. Everything inside your own frame goes onto one key with new pins at $30–$47 per cylinder, each one after the first at the low end, and the unidentified ones get read at the van so you at least know what they were cut for. The gate and the building door serve everybody rather than you, so bringing those onto your key is not ours to decide, and who can order work on them is a question between you and the building.
The pedestrian gate latch does not catch anymore and it has been propped open for a month.+
That is a post that has moved and a keeper that is no longer where the bolt lands, which is the most common finding on this property. Realigning the latch and moving the keeper is mechanical work, and a cylinder or padlock that can be keyed to something already on your ring goes on at $126–$338 depending on what the leaf needs. Because the gate serves the whole complex, we ask who is authorizing the work and take that in writing before a van goes out.
I rent here. Can the lock on my own door be changed?+
The lockout half is simple: a door you live behind is opened at $129–$246 with identification shown at the step. Repinning or swapping that cylinder is a separate request and not one settled on a doormat. It comes from the owner or from whoever manages the unit, and a short written message from either of them sends the van out with approval already in hand. Say on the call which of the two you actually need, so nobody ends up waiting in a hallway for a phone call to be returned.
Open 24 hours, 7 days
Name the door, and say who else has a key for it
Milpitas, at any hour, every day of the year. A front door in the tracts, a gate at a complex, a garage service door, a storefront in Midtown or a car in the mall lot — that decides the work, and the work decides the figure. The figure comes back on the same call with the $89 call-out and the clock already inside it, and it is the figure on the receipt. Ninety days on the labor, in writing. The van is already on this side of the interchange.