A College Terrace Rental Between Tenants: The Rekey a Landlord Does the Week the Lease Turns Over

On the streets between El Camino Real and Stanford Avenue the calendar is set by the university, and so is the locksmith's. A lease ends in mid-June or at the close of August, the tenants hand back three keys of the five they were given, and the landlord has two weeks to turn the house before the next family arrives with a car full of boxes. Somewhere in those two weeks the doors are rekeyed, and a landlord who has done it before books it on the same day as the cleaners so the new keys are cut while the floors dry.

A College Terrace rental is more cylinders than it looks from the street. The front door has a knob and a deadbolt, sometimes on different keys. The back door has a rim latch. The converted garage at the end of the drive is a unit of its own with a door and a padlocked shed beside it. The side gate is shared between the house and the garage unit. The mailbox at the curb has a small cam lock nobody has opened in years. Counted honestly, that is six or seven cylinders, and the count is the first thing said on the call because the figure is built from it.

A rekey changes the pins inside the cylinder so the old keys stop working and a new key starts, at $27 to $45 per cylinder. The knob, the deadbolt, the plate and the finish stay on the door. For a landlord that matters twice: nothing new has to be bought, and nothing changes on a 1920s cottage door that a tenant or a neighbor would notice. A hardware-store deadbolt fitted in 2004 is a perfectly good deadbolt; it does not need replacing, it needs the tenants of the last six years to stop being able to open it.

Replacement is for a lock that has failed, not for one that has changed hands. A knob whose latch has stopped springing, a deadbolt whose bolt no longer throws all the way, a cylinder so worn that any key wiggles it open: those are replaced at $125 to $329 per door, and the technician says which doors, if any, qualify while the plate is off. On most turnovers in College Terrace the answer is none.

The incoming tenants should get one key that opens every door of their unit and nothing else. That is keying alike: the front deadbolt, the front knob and the back rim latch are pinned to the same cut, and the tenants get two copies each instead of a ring that needs a label. Where the landlord keeps a set, it is the same key, and where the property manager keeps a set, it goes into an envelope in the office with the address on it.

The side gate is the puzzle on lots with a garage unit. Both households use it and neither should be able to open the other's door. The gate latch is pinned so that both unit keys pass it, which is ordinary work for a technician with a pinning kit and a few minutes, and the two unit doors are pinned apart. Nobody needs a third key for the gate, and the landlord's key opens all three. That arrangement is explained on the call and repeated on the receipt, so the next turnover starts from a known state.

A great many College Terrace houses belong to someone who no longer lives in the city: a retired professor in another state, a family that moved and kept the house, an owner who lets a property manager handle everything. The work is booked by whoever is responsible for the house, and for a rekey that means the owner or the manager. A short message from the owner naming the manager is enough; it is asked for on the call and kept with the receipt. A tenant may not rekey a landlord's door on their own say, and that is said on the call, with a suggestion to contact the landlord.

A lockout is a different question with a different answer. A tenant locked out at ten at night has every right to be let back into the home they rent, and the standard is proof that the person at the door lives there: an ID and the lease on a phone. The door is picked open, never drilled, because the door is the landlord's property and a drilled cylinder is a bill nobody agreed to. Arrival to College Terrace is about twenty-three minutes by way of Page Mill Road.

Landlords who are tired of driving to the house to hand over keys ask about a keypad. On a rental it is a reasonable idea if it goes on the right door. A smart lock at $189 to $479 on the unit door gives each lease its own code, retired the day the tenants leave and issued fresh to the next ones without a visit. A mechanical key stays underneath it for the landlord and for the day the battery is flat. The front door of a shingled 1908 cottage on the historic side of the district is not the place for a keypad, and the kitchen door or the garage unit door is.

What a keypad does not remove is the rekey of everything else. The back door, the gate and the mailbox still carry cylinders, and the tenants who left still have those keys. The code and the rekey are done in the same visit, and the $89 service call is inside that one figure once.

A typical turnover on a College Terrace house with a garage unit: six or seven cylinders rekeyed at $27 to $45 each, keyed alike by unit, the gate pinned for both, the mailbox cam changed, four copies cut on the van, and the $89 service call inside the figure once. A manager with two more houses on the same block adds them to the same visit and the visit fee does not repeat. The itemized receipt reaches the owner's email before the cleaners have finished, and a written line for the file, naming the address, the cylinders and who received which keys, comes with it.

Tall Tree Lock & Safe works to the Tall Tree Standard. A lock is picked or decoded open first, and drilling happens only with your agreement and never for a higher figure. One figure is said on the call, covering the visit, the labor and the parts, and that figure is on the receipt. The hardware grade is named before it is fitted, and original hardware is kept and rekeyed wherever it can be. Payment is card or tap at the door, with an itemized receipt by email and a written line for a landlord, an HOA or an insurer when you need one.