Lock Rekeying in Milpitas
$30–$47 per cylinder. New pins go into the lock already on the door, so every key cut before that morning stops working and nothing about the door changes visibly. This is the ordinary first-month job on a tract house: front, back, garage service door and the gate all answering to one key, and six cylinders on a hillside property with two gates. Each cylinder after the first costs less, since the trip is paid for once.
4.9 / 5· 207 reviews from Milpitas and the north end of the valley
$30–$47 per cylinder
Typical price
18 min
Avg. arrival
24/7
Availability
Repinning is the least expensive useful thing that can be done to a door. The lock never leaves the door. It takes a fresh set of bottom pins, after which it answers one new key and ignores every key handed out before this morning. Nothing is drilled, the hardware is the hardware you already own, and the finish is the finish you already have. What changes is only the list of people who can walk in.
The version this city calls about most is the purchase. Escrow closes on a house in Parktown or Sunnyhills, and by then the keys have passed through an agent, a stager, a painter, an inspector and whoever was watering the yard in July. The second version is the door nobody counts: the service door from the garage into the house, which normally shares a key with nothing and has been opened for years with a spare off a nail. Front, back, that garage door and the padlock on the side gate will usually come onto one blade wherever the keyways allow, and that is the part a household actually notices. One key on the ring you carry to work instead of four.
In a complex, half of a turnover is somebody else's half. A card or a gate remote is switched off at a desk, and that list belongs to the management office, not to a van. Metal is our half, and it is the plain job described above: the unit door, the storage cage, the mailbox where it takes a standard cylinder. Where the door in question is shared, who orders the work is worked out on the call between you and the building, and this site does not claim to know more than that.
Brass already hanging in a door here is usually worth keeping. Pull a cylinder off a tract front door and it can nearly always be repinned at the bench in the van inside a few minutes, and it will outlive most of what a shelf would sell you as its replacement. The honest exception is a plug worn out of round, most often a gate cylinder that has taken twenty summers on the hill side of town. Fresh pins in a worn plug hand you a lock that binds on a brand new key, so when that is what comes off the door you hear it at the bench, and the replacement is quoted against the published $126 to $338 instead of being folded into a total.
Cost is $30 to $47 for each cylinder, and the $89 service call is counted once for the stop rather than once per lock. Four cylinders is a short hour. Add $48 to the stop after eight in the evening and $86 between midnight and seven, both said before the van moves. At the finish, every old key gets tried in every lock while you watch it do nothing, and that is the part worth paying attention to, more than the receipt.
“We bought a house up toward Ed Levin and inherited seven keys for what turned out to be five locks, two of which opened nothing we could find anywhere on the property. Five cylinders repinned at $36 each, $269 all in with the $89 visit counted inside it: front door, garage service door, the side gate, the yard gate on the slope and the laundry door. One key for all of it now, which up here is the difference between carrying a ring and carrying a key! The guy talked me out of two locks I had assumed we would need to buy, because the front cylinder turns cleanly and only wanted pins and oil, and the gate on the slope needed its post straightened far more than it needed hardware. He quoted 22 minutes on the phone and that is roughly what it was. The sellers' keys went back to us in a bag with a note of which door each one used to open, so I could check them against the list from escrow.”
All sixteen jobs are printed here, fourteen with ranges and two quoted once the doors have been walked. What moves a figure inside its range is which lock on the way in stopped you and how long that lock has stood unused. A front door somebody opens twice a day takes the low end. A gate latch nobody has walked through since the complex opened is dry, full of grit and often will not take the key that was cut for it, and that takes the time it is owed. Say which one stopped you and the range closes to a single figure.
- Daytime (7am–8pm)standard rates
- Evening (8pm–12am)+$48
- Overnight (12am–7am)+$86
FAQ
Lock Rekeying: quick answers
We just closed on a house here. Rekey or replace?+
Repinning, nearly always. Every key that went through the agent, the stager, the painter and whoever came by to water the yard stops working, at a fraction of the cost of new hardware. Replacement is the answer for a lock that has failed mechanically, not for a lock whose only fault is a history. While the technician is there, add the service door from the garage. It is the second door of the house and the one people remember last.
A tenant is moving out of our complex. Is this the same as switching off their entry card?+
Two different jobs, and it helps to keep them named separately. A card or a gate remote comes off a list at a desk in the management office, in about a minute, and no locksmith touches that list. The cylinders that take keys are metal work at $30 to $47 each. A move-out usually needs both halves done, and only one of them needs a van.
How many locks can be done on one stop?+
Every cylinder at the address, if that is what you want. The stop is one $89 service call and the cylinders are $30 to $47 each, so the price per door keeps falling as you add them. Four exterior doors onto a single key normally lands inside the hour, and each door is listed on its own under the address, which is the shape a turnover file wants.
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More residential services
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.