The seller handed you two keys at closing. The listing agent had one. The lockbox had one. The previous owner's cleaner, dog walker, brother-in-law and the tenant before them each had one, and none of those people gave theirs back. Navarre Locksmith rekeys the whole house to a single new key on move-in day, so the only copies in the world are the ones you hand out yourself.
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Every house in Navarre has a key history, and you inherited it at closing. The typical home in Holley by the Sea or off East Bay Boulevard has changed hands a few times, has been rented at least once, and has had a parade of contractors, cleaners, inspectors and agents through the front door. Each one of those people was handed a key at some point. Some of them returned it. Some of them made a copy at a hardware store first. Some of them have it on a ring in a kitchen drawer and have not thought about it in years. None of that is malicious, and all of it means you do not actually know who can open your front door tonight.
A rekey ends that history. We change the pins inside each lock so that the old keys, wherever they are, no longer turn anything, and a fresh key does. From that moment the list of people who can get in is exactly the list of people you have handed a key to. That is what we mean by household key control, and move-in day is the cheapest moment to establish it.
We come to the house, usually the day you get possession or the first weekend you are there. We walk every exterior door with you: front, back, side, the door between the garage and the house, the door from the garage to the yard, sliders, and any door into a workshop or storage room attached to the house. We check the brand and keyway on each lock, confirm which ones can be keyed alike, and tell you if any lock is worn, sticking, or cheap enough that replacing it makes more sense than rekeying it.
Then we rekey. Each cylinder is taken apart, repinned to the new key, and put back. We test every door from both sides, check that the deadbolt throws fully into the strike, and hand you the number of new keys you asked for. Most homes leave with every door on one key. The whole visit is short, and you do not need to do anything but be there and decide how many copies you want.
One key for every door is the goal for most families. Fewer keys means fewer keys to lose, fewer keys to hand out, and a much simpler answer when a sitter or a relative needs to get in. If the previous owners installed locks from different brands over the years, we tell you which ones cannot join the set and what the fix costs before we touch anything.
New homes in the subdivisions going up around Navarre and East Bay have a different key problem. A builder's construction key opened your door for months while framers, painters, tile crews, and inspectors came and went. Some builders install locks that automatically retire the construction key when the homeowner key is used for the first time. Many do not. And even when they do, the builder's superintendent, the warranty crew, and the landscaper may each still hold a working copy. A rekey on a brand-new house is not paranoia. It is finishing the job the builder started.
If you rent in Navarre, the previous tenant, the previous tenant's friends, the property manager's last maintenance guy, and possibly a cleaning company all had keys to your front door. Ask your landlord or manager whether the locks were rekeyed between tenants. If the answer is a shrug, ask permission to rekey, get it in writing, and offer them a copy. Most managers say yes because it protects them too.
Roommates are the other side of this. When a roommate moves out, the key they hand back is not the only key they ever had. A rekey after a roommate leaves, or after a breakup, is the single most common household-security call we get that is not a lockout, and it is a quiet one. Nobody needs to know. The locks just stop opening for the old key.
A lot of Navarre homes now have a keypad or a smart lock on the front door, and new owners assume that changing the code is the whole job. It is half the job. The other half is the physical key cylinder that nearly every keypad lock keeps as a backup. That cylinder still opens on whatever key the last owner had, and it is the part that a rekey fixes. When we do a move-in rekey on a keypad house, we wipe every stored user code, set a new master code, teach you how to add and delete temporary codes for a sitter or a cleaner, and rekey the backup cylinder so the old physical key is dead too.
If the smart lock is tied to an app account, make sure the previous owner has removed the lock from their account and you have set it up on yours. A lock that still lives in someone else's phone can be opened from anywhere.
Once the locks are on your key, the question becomes how you hand copies out. The households that never call us for a second rekey tend to follow a few simple habits. Keep a written list of who has a key. Give sitters, cleaners, and contractors a keypad code with an expiration rather than a metal key when the lock supports it. Put the spare in a proper lockbox, not under a pot, not on top of the door frame, not in the grill. When a key is lost, treat it as lost rather than misplaced, and rekey. Rekeying is cheap enough that it should be a reflex, not a debate.
The first house key a teenager carries is usually the first one that goes missing. We cut spares while we are at the house so a lost key is a nuisance and not a security event, and on keypad homes we set a personal code for each kid so you can see who came in and when, and change one code without changing everyone's.
A move-in visit is also the time to look at the locks people forget. The door from the garage into the house is often the weakest exterior door on a Navarre home and it is the one most likely to be left unlocked. Sliding glass doors toward the sound or the bay need a secondary lock or a bar, because the factory latch on most sliders is not a lock in any meaningful sense. Gates on pool enclosures should latch and self-close. Sheds and detached garages hold bikes, tools, and fishing gear and are usually on a padlock that came with the house. We look at all of it and you decide what to do.
Some homes in Navarre come with a safe bolted into a closet floor or set into a wall, and no combination. If the seller cannot provide it, we can open the safe without destroying it in most cases and reset the combination or install a new lock so it is yours. Do not let a contractor cut it open. A safe that has been cut is scrap, and a safe that has been opened properly is a safe.
Walk the house at the final walk-through with a notepad. Count every exterior door and note the brand stamped on the face of each deadbolt and knob. Ask the seller how many keys exist and how many they are handing over; the gap between those two numbers is your answer to whether a rekey is optional. Ask whether the house was ever rented, whether a cleaning service had a key, and whether the garage door opener remotes are all accounted for. Check the keypad, if there is one, for a list of stored codes. Ask about the safe. None of this changes what we do on move-in day, but it tells you how urgent it is, and it gives you a starting list of who has ever held a key.
If you are the one moving out, the kind thing and the smart thing are the same. Collect every key you can, tell the buyer honestly how many you could not collect, and let them know the locks are in good enough shape to rekey rather than replace. Do not rekey for the buyer yourself; they will want to do it after closing so the only person who has ever held the new key is them. If your listing agent installed a lockbox, make sure it comes off and the key inside goes to the buyer at the table, not to the agent's trunk.
A move-in rekey is routine work, and that is exactly why it should be done by someone who does it in your neighborhood every week. We know which subdivisions off Navarre Parkway were built with which lock brands, which older homes around Holley have mixed hardware from decades of owners, which sliders toward East Bay need a bar and which need a pin, and how the salt air from the sound shortens the life of a cheap exterior lock. We are not a call center with a subcontractor two counties away. When you call the number on this page you reach the people who will be at your door.
Holley by the Sea, the neighborhoods along East Bay Boulevard, the older streets around Holley, the subdivisions off Navarre Parkway and Highway 98, and the rest of Navarre and southern Santa Rosa County. If you have a closing date, call us with it and we will meet you at the house.
We do not rekey a house for someone who cannot show they own it or lease it. We do not tell you to replace every lock when rekeying will do. We do not quote one price on the phone and another at the door. And we do not leave until every door has been tested from both sides on the new key, because the point of the visit is that you sleep in a house nobody else can open.
Ready when you are. Call (850) 740-4401 and tell us where you are standing.