Changing the Locks After a Roommate, a Breakup, or a Move-Out in Houston

This is one of the calls we take most often and talk about least. Somebody moved out. Somebody was asked to leave. A relationship ended, a roommate's name came off the lease, an adult kid moved in with a partner you have never met and took a key with them.

The question is always some version of the same two: can I change the locks, and how fast can you be here. Here is the honest version of both.

First, the part that is not about hardware

Who may change the locks depends on who has a legal right to be in the home, and that is not a locksmith's call to make. The short version of how it usually breaks down in Texas:

• You own the home and live in it alone. Your locks, your call, any time.
• You own it and someone else lives there with a legal right to be there — a spouse, a tenant on a lease, in some cases an occupant who has established residence. Locking that person out is a legal question, not a hardware question, and it can go badly for you if you get it wrong.
• You rent, and you want your own locks changed. Texas law gives residential tenants rights around security devices, including situations involving family violence, where a tenant may be able to require the landlord to rekey. The rules have conditions and notice requirements attached.
• You rent and you want a roommate's key killed. If both names are on the lease, the other person is a tenant too, and this is a landlord conversation first.

We are locksmiths, not attorneys. When we arrive we will verify that the person hiring us is authorized to have the work done — that is standard, it is required of us, and it protects you as much as anyone. If your situation is one of the middle ones above, talk to a lawyer or your property manager before you call us, not after. If you own rentals and this is a tenant turnover, the operational side is covered in our piece on what Texas landlords owe every new tenant.

If you are in immediate danger, call 911 first. A locksmith is not the first call in that situation, and any locksmith worth hiring will tell you the same thing.

Rekeying is almost always the right answer

Most people call asking to "change the locks," picturing new hardware on every door. Usually you do not need it.

Rekeying means we take the cylinders off your existing locks, repin them to a brand-new key, and put them back. When we drive away, every old key in existence is a piece of scrap metal. The hardware is unchanged, the doors are unchanged, and it takes ten to fifteen minutes per lock.

Replacing means new hardware. You want that when the locks are worn out, mismatched, damaged, or when you want an upgrade you were going to make anyway. It is not more secure against a key that is out there — a rekey is exactly as final. We break down the full comparison in rekey or replace.

For a standard Houston three-door house — front, back, garage-to-house — a rekey is a single short visit and everything ends up on one key, which is usually a small upgrade over the four different keys people have been carrying.

The doors and devices people forget

The front door is the one everybody thinks of. In practice, the way people get back in is almost never the front door.

Walk this list before we arrive:

• Garage door remotes and the keypad. Every opener made in the last twenty-plus years can erase all paired remotes with a button on the motor head. Do that, then re-pair only the remotes you physically hold. Change the keypad code. A garage remote left in a glove box is the single most common way an ex still has access to a house.
• The garage-to-house door. If the overhead door goes up, this is your real front door. Rekey it, and if it only has a knob, this is the moment to add a deadbolt.
• The side gate and the back gate. If there is a keyed pedestrian gate, it needs to be on the new key.
• Smart lock codes and app users. Delete user codes, and check the app's list of authorized users — a phone that still has the door in it does not care that you changed the physical key. Also rekey the mechanical override cylinder, because most smart deadbolts still have one and the old key still fits it.
• Window latches and sliding door bars. Cheap, often missing, and the way into a lot of Houston back patios.
• The hide-a-key. The rock, the magnet box in the wheel well, the key on the ledge above the door frame. Everybody who ever lived there knows about it. Retire it entirely — if you need backup access, a proper lockbox with a code you can change beats a rock.
• Alarm codes and camera accounts. Not our department, but same afternoon, same list. Shared accounts on a doorbell camera are a live feed for someone you no longer want watching.
• Mail. A curbside box lock we can rekey. A USPS cluster box is postal property and we cannot touch it — that is a post office request.

What a same-day visit looks like

Most of these calls are same-day, and a fair number are same-hour, because people generally do not want to spend a night in a house where an old key is unaccounted for. We run 24/7 emergency service across the metro for exactly this reason.

To make the visit fast:

1. Count the keyed doors. Not rooms — cylinders. Front, back, garage-to-house, gate, storage shed, curbside mailbox.
2. Decide your key count before we finish. Extra keys cut on site cost very little and are annoying to add later.
3. Have your ID and something tying you to the address. Lease, deed, mortgage statement, utility bill. We will ask. It takes thirty seconds and it is what stops a locksmith from being the tool somebody uses against you.
4. Tell us if there is any risk of the other party arriving. We will plan the visit accordingly, and we will not stand in the middle of a confrontation. That is not us being difficult; it is us keeping a bad day from getting worse.

Do not do the half version

The failure mode we come back out for a week later is always the same: somebody rekeyed the front door and stopped. The back slider still opens on the old routine, the garage keypad still has the code from 2019, and the smart lock still lists a user named after the person who left.

Do it in one pass. One visit, every cylinder on one new key, remotes cleared, codes changed, and then you are actually done and can stop thinking about it — which, in our experience, is the whole point of the call.

Booking it

We are licensed and bonded, we cover the entire Houston metro including Katy, Pearland, Spring, Cypress, Missouri City and League City, and we quote before we start.

Service details are on our lock rekeying and residential locksmith pages. Or call and tell us how many doors — that is the only number we need to give you a price.