New home - change locks?

[Lollipop2025]

Hello,

I've seen the general advice to change locks on a new home but how many of you actually did this?
We move next week and I don't remember my parents ever doing this so wondered if its actually a thing people did in the real world?
First time buyer as you couldn't already tell 😂

Moved 4x
never
and never will in future

Yes. You don't know who might have spares.

Yes I would recommend when buying a property that has been let out, otherwise seems not necessary imo

Never done this personally.
Would you have requested a landlord to change locks between tenants?
Does your home contents insurance company require you to change the locks? (You would think they would if this was really a big risk…)

Yes. Shortly after moving in I had a couple turn up at the foot asking to see the new property for rent....

Made me think I had no idea how many people/ who has copied of the existing keys.

Changing them yourself is not that expensive and plenty of tutorials online

Definitely do it. You have no idea who has keys.

When you move in work out what your lock is, look on Youtube on how to change the barrel as you will need to know what size barrel you need. All information is at your fingertips.

We had a previous tenant when we were in rented try to sell us the spare keys she still had for our house

Always straight away after certain experience when former tenant was dropping in to get their mail with their copy of the fucking key. People are mental

Never have. It's never been anything I've thought about.

That is despite having so many keys cut in the past and having no idea where the missing ones are.

Yes, we did this, booked it in beforehand for completion day.

I couldn't handle knowing that anyone could have the keys and walk into my house.

Yes and our locks are suited, same key for front a d back door.

No it has never occurred to me to do this. And I’ve never heard anyone say they’re doing it. Only seen it mentioned on here.

Of course. You can have zero idea who has keys. Our house before we bought it had been a big student party house (post-divorce, the wife got the former marital home, but then moved overseas for years, leaving her student-aged children to live in it with a succession of friends and housemates, and at one point a physio also operating out of one of the bedrooms), so dozens of people had keys and knew it as a house you could rock up at for a party if if you needed a bed for the night.

Never done it, didn’t cross my mind. No issues thankfully.

We have always changed at least one lock on the front door.

Im a LL and I always change locks between tenants and when I first buy a new house the first thing I always do is get the locks changed. Many people may have been given a spare key over the years.

Every single time.
As soon as the boxes are in, I'll change the locks. Never know how any keys have been cut, how many neighbours have a copy etc etc.

Thank you! Current owner has been there 15 years so probably a lot of keys floating around family ect so probably wise to change them. I'll look into doing it ourselves.
I've rented for 17 years so no idea if our landlord has changed locks in between tenants.

I think I'll do it for peace of mind more than any thing. Thanks!

This is very clever and will look into this as the new home has 3 doors and will make the kids lives easier

Yes definitely! We got the keys as FTB, waited for the locksmith who arrived an hour later. Job done, peace of mind. In that one hour we got stuck into cleaning and running through each room squealing in delight just because we could 😂

I've got spare keys to my friends house which they forgot when they moved out. Perhaps I'll go and test them out, perhaps I'll drop them through the new owners letter box....

Definitely change them, we have with every house purchase. I've heard horror stories of previous owners sneaking in to be nosy, or to grab something they left in the loft.

We did , but strangely when we were between house buying and we rented for a year , didn't think to ask the owner .

Yes change them. For two reasons. One you don't know who has keys. Second the eurocylinder locks are often crap and easy to snap anyway. You want the three star barrel lock as a minimum IMO.

I have security keys that come with a keycard. No one can copy the key without the code on the keycard. So you can give them to people like builders safe in the knowledge no copies can be made (they probably can, but it would be horribly difficult).

You can get keyed alike barrels for eurocylinder locks for double doors or front and back.

My tip would be, always get the keys when you are buying the locks, because the high security keys are very expensive to get replicas of.

We did when we moved recently. No idea who had keys previously!

Yes
I have moved quite a few times and always changed the locks
As PPs have said, you don't know who might have a set of those keys .
I put the locks in myself, which cut out the cost of a locksmith to fit it.