My tenant's roommate is moving out at the end of the lease. He is going to renew but the roommate is not. He requested me to change the locks after the roommate leaves. Do you charge for this, if so how much? Or do you eat the expense?
Tenant wants locks changed after roommate move out
byu/DryGeneral990 inrealestateinvesting
Posted by DryGeneral990
5 Comments
How much is it to change the locks? If they want the locks changed there’s a good reason for it.
I’ve always eaten these requests. They pay if they get locked out and need a locksmith though.
Is it one of those easy to change quickset type locks? If so I’d just change it as a goodwill gesture to the tenant.
I go to depot and ask for keys they have had from customers or whatever and use those for keys and rekey off that, not like Jane doe would know her key is used at XXXXXX address. I keep a couple dozen different keys and rotate them around as needed to my houses I rent.
Let’s be honest, there’s only a specific number of variables out there for kwikset locks plus with a couple dozen keys on hand it’s fast and easy to switch em out. If a tenant has an issue like this I react fast and go do it without issues within a couple hours at most. It’s all about perception from the tenant and safety.
You can largely avoid this issue in the future by changing all of your rentals to Kwikset SmartKey locks. I got the pro-tip early on, and we add them to all of our own rentals as well as rentals we manage for clients. It allows you to rekey the locks yourself in about 15 seconds.
So I guess my answer is that this is a great time to upgrade your property with those locks, and doing this at no cost to the renewing resident would earn a decent amount of good will from them.
Unless your area has unique landlord-tenant laws, you are almost certainly within your rights to charge the tenant for the lock change, but given that they are renewing, I would not.
Consider the liability if you refuse.