You got the keys at closing. You called someone about the front door lock. You crossed “change the locks” off your moving-in list, and you slept easy that night. That’s what almost everyone does.
It’s also the reason a lot of “safe” new homes really aren’t.
Stop and think about how many people had a working key to your house before you did. The old owners. Their kids. Their cleaner. The dog walker. The realtor. The handyman who fixed the sink two summers ago. The neighbor who watered the plants that one week. There’s a real, uncountable pile of keys to your house floating around out there, and you can’t call any of them back.
You did the smart thing at the front door. You just didn’t do it in the one spot that gets used the most.
The break-in numbers almost nobody talks about
Time for a gut check.
FBI Uniform Crime Reporting data, pulled together by security researchers this year, breaks down how burglars actually get in. About 34% come in the front door. Around 22% come in the back door. Another 9% come through the garage. First-floor windows are another 23%. Basements and other ground-level spots cover most of what’s left. Add it up and you get the number police keep repeating: 81% of home break-ins happen on the first floor.
Now read those numbers one more time. Yes, the front door is the single most-used way in. But the back door, the garage, and the other ground-level doors add up to more than the front door on its own. And those are the doors most people never touch on move-in day.
There’s a second number that hits even harder. Per the same FBI data, roughly 37.8% of burglars don’t force their way in at all. No broken window. No busted frame. They walked in through something unlocked, or they had a working key. And “a working key” is exactly what an old copy of an old key is.
The doors almost every new homeowner forgets
Locksmiths who work with new homeowners see the same story on repeat. The team at 1-800-Unlocks, a nationwide locksmith network, puts it plainly: the keys you get at closing “may have already been copied more times than you know,” and old owners, agents, contractors, cleaners, and neighbors could all still have working ones.
And that risk doesn’t stop at the front porch. These are the ways in that almost always stay on the old key:
- The back door. Same house, same key setup, often the exact same builder-installed lock that came with the place. If the old owner made a spare for the dog walker, that spare still works today. FBI data pins back doors at 22% of break-ins, and locksmiths say the reason is simple. From the yard side, whoever’s at your door is out of sight of the street.
- The side door on the garage. That little service door on the side of an attached garage is one of the most overlooked ways into a house. Get through it, and somebody’s standing inside your garage with the door shut behind them, right next to the door that leads into your kitchen. Security Man, a home-security retailer, calls it “the forgotten entry point,” and the nickname earns itself.
- The door from the garage into the house. That inside door is a lock too, and it’s usually a cheap knob lock nobody’s ever touched. It’s the last thing between the garage and your living room.
- Sliding patio doors. Most run on a latch instead of a key, but Bob Vila’s home-security guide flags sliding doors as one of the biggest weak spots in the whole house, mostly because people just don’t think about them.
- Side gates, sheds, and the shed out back. The padlocks came with the house. Whoever had the key still has it.
If you only swapped out the front, every single one of these is still on the old key. That’s the “one way in that matters most” from the top of this story. It isn’t one door. It’s every door that isn’t the front one.
The move most people don’t know they can make
Now the useful part.
You don’t have to buy new locks to shut old keys out. You can rekey the ones you already have. Rekeying just means swapping the tiny pins inside the lock so the old keys stop working and only your new key turns it. The knob stays. The deadbolt stays. The door stays. You’re only changing what key opens the thing.
And the piece most people miss: you can rekey every outside lock in the house to one brand-new key. One key opens the front, the back, the garage side door, the inside garage door, even the shed padlock. If the locks are all the same brand (all Kwikset, or all Schlage), a locksmith or a patient DIYer can bring them all onto one key in a single sitting. Bob Vila’s rekey guide says this is the most common reason people rekey in the first place.
What it actually costs:
- Kwikset SmartKey locks (the round-key ones with a little pinhole next to the keyway): you can rekey them yourself in about 15 seconds each with a SmartKey rekey kit that runs about $12 to $15 (roughly €11 to €14 / £10 to £13). You do need one working original key. Kwikset’s own instructions confirm that.
- Older Kwikset, Schlage, Defiant, Baldwin, and other pin-and-tumbler locks: you’ll need a brand-matched rekey kit, usually $11 to $25 per kit (about €10 to €23 / £9 to £21) per Angi’s home-service pricing. Each kit handles several locks of the same brand. All-in, Angi puts the DIY cost around $10 to $30 per lock (about €9 to €28 / £8 to £25).
- Rather call a pro? Acme Locksmith, a Phoenix residential shop, quotes about $250 to $350 for a three-door house call (about €230 to €320 / £200 to £280), or roughly $20 per lock (about €18 / £16) if you bring them into the shop.
When you call the locksmith or walk up to the hardware counter, the exact words to use are: “rekey all my outside locks to a single new key.” Then hand over your list.
What to actually do this week
Walk the outside of your house once with a pen. Write down every lock that could let a stranger step from outside to inside. Then work through the list in this order:
- Front door deadbolt and handle lock. Rekey both to the same new key.
- Back door deadbolt and any knob lock. Rekey to match.
- Side door on the garage. Rekey to match. This is the door locksmiths flag the most, so don’t skip it.
- The door from garage to house. Rekey if it takes the same brand, replace it if it doesn’t.
- Sliding patio door. Rekey any keyed cylinder, and drop a security bar or a cut-to-fit wooden dowel into the track no matter what.
- Side gates, sheds, detached garages. Any padlock that came with the house gets swapped for one whose key or code you set from day one.
- Basement or bulkhead door. Same treatment as the back door.
If the whole property comes onto one new key, you carry one key. That’s the payoff. Every outside lock on your property answers only to you, starting day one.
Because rekeying just the front door and calling it done means the person who really wanted in was never going through the front door anyway. They already had a key to somewhere else.
Sources: (1) FBI burglary entry-point breakdown via Modern Home Protection; (2) FBI unlawful-entry data via LegalClarity; (3) 1-800-Unlocks rekey vs. replace guidance for new homeowners; (4) Security Man on the garage side door as a forgotten entry point; (5) Bob Vila on sliding glass door vulnerabilities; (6) Bob Vila’s rekeying guide and single-key setup; (7) Kwikset SmartKey official rekey product page; (8) Angi rekey kit and DIY pricing; (9) Acme Locksmith house rekey pricing.
