Organizing Yourself for Landlord Success Part 2
Last week I explained my woes about getting all my unit's keys organized. This week I will talk about how I handle changing those pesky locks for a re-rent. Before I wised up, I was purchasing a new lock set from Home Depot and changing the entire lock set on the doors. When I would do this, I would have to fiddle around with the rest of the lock in order to get the door aligned correctly.
Now, with much more wisdom, I am changing out just the handle part of the lock so I don't have to re-align the locking part of the door lock. This keeps my lock changing to a faster time and it looks as if I changed out the whole entire lock.
I also keep my old lock set around and label it so that I can use it on my next re-rent.
I have a plastic container that is large enough to hold three lock sets. My units have double deadbolts on three doors, as well as handle locks. When it is time to change locks after a moveout, I grab my lock container (it has three lock sets from the last moveout) and head to the unit. As you said, do not remove the bolts, just the handles, and the locks. It doesn't take much time at all to make the change. Place the locks you removed into the container, and you are ready for your next moveout.
If you feel you need to rekey, and you have the ability to do so yourself, you have the ability to do so, at home, at your leisure while watching your favorite sports activity on TV, working on the locks in your container.
Before I bought a rekey kit, I would drop the container off at my local hardware store, and then pick it up, with all locks rekeyed, whenever I happened to be back in.
It's faster than rekeying on site. Cheaper than buying new locks. And it is much more convenient.