Moving Into a New Home | What I'd Change on Day One, and What Can Wait

Estate agents rarely mention it, but the day you move in, you genuinely do not know who has a key to your new front door. The previous owners. Their cleaner. The builder who did the extension. The neighbour they left a spare with in 2019. An ex who never handed it back. The agent's copy. There's no register, no recall, no way to be sure.

So people panic and overcorrect. They start pricing up smart locks and cameras before the boxes are unpacked. I'd pump the brakes on that. After years of fitting this stuff, here's what I'd actually do, in order, and what I'd leave for later.

Day one: swap the cylinders. That's it.

The cylinder is the part the key goes into, and it's the only thing that needs to happen on day one. Change it and every key floating around out there, whoever's pocket it's in, stops working immediately. You don't need a new door. You usually don't even need a new lock mechanism. Just the barrel.

On a uPVC or composite door, which is most modern Basingstoke homes, that's a 15-20 minute job: out with the old cylinder, in with a new anti-snap one, fresh keys cut. On a wooden door with a mortice and a rim cylinder, it's two bits of hardware and closer to an hour. Either way, by lunchtime you're the only one who can open your house.

What I'd check the same week, not the same hour

Once the keys are sorted, two quick ones:

• The back door. Insurers care about every final exit door, not just the front, and the back is the one that gets ignored. If it isn't TS007 3-star or a BS3621 mortice, fix it now while you're thinking about it.
• Keyed-alike. If your front, back and garage doors all take different keys, ask us to key the new cylinders alike. One key for the house. It's cheap, often free if we're already swapping them, and you'll thank yourself every day after.

What can genuinely wait

Here's the contrarian bit. The internet will tell you a new home needs a video doorbell, a keypad, an app-controlled smart lock and a camera on every corner. Most of that can wait, and some of it you'll never miss.

A smart lock is the big one people rush. I fit them, I like the good ones, and I still wouldn't put one on in week one. Why? Because a smart lock sitting on a cheap, snappable cylinder is still a cheap, snappable cylinder with a motor stuck to it. The security lives in the mechanical part. Get that right first. Then live in the place for a few weeks and work out whether you actually want app access, or whether you just liked the idea of it in the shop.

A word for tenants

If you're renting, you usually can't change the locks off your own bat. Check the agreement and ask the landlord. Most reasonable ones will sort a cylinder change at the start of a tenancy if you ask, especially if there's any reason to think old keys are still going around. Any decent landlord is already doing this between tenants anyway.

Booking it

Moving this week or next? Give us a ring with the postcode and the date, and we'll slot you in, ideally for the move-in day itself, after the old owners are out and before you've finished with the boxes. We cover Basingstoke and RG21 to RG29, quote on the call, and we won't try to sell you the gadget wall on day one. It's not the exciting job on your moving list. It's just one of the few that genuinely matters.