Rekey Locks in Millbrae - Flat Per-Lock Price, Quoted on the Phone

Fast, Reliable Rekey Locks Across Millbrae

Rekeying a lock in Millbrae typically costs $25 to $45 per cylinder and takes about 20 to 30 minutes to complete at your door. That is the honest range we quote on the phone, and it is the number on your invoice, no arrival surcharge. We serve homes from the hills above El Camino Real down to the flats near Broadway, and our technicians arrive in a marked vehicle with a written price already confirmed before dispatch.

Preston Locksmith & Security performs rekeying by swapping the internal pins inside each lock cylinder so your old keys stop working immediately, no new hardware required. Kevin Yoon and our Millbrae crew handle everything from a single front-door deadbolt to a whole-house keyed-alike job across multiple brands. Call (409) 405-4485 and a live person answers, 24/7.

Why Preston Locksmith & Security Is Millbrae’s Preferred Rekey Locks Company

Millbrae’s housing stock is a genuine mixed bag. One street off Murchison Drive can have a 1952 ranch with original Schlage hardware next to a remodeled split-level running a Kwikset keypad on the front door and a Yale deadbolt on the garage. Most locksmiths show up ready to either replace everything or rekey one brand and shrug at the rest. We are trained on Medeco, Mul-T-Lock, Abloy, Baldwin, and Sargent alongside everyday Schlage, Kwikset, and Yale hardware, so we can bring a mixed-generation house onto one key without replacing working locks.

Local reputation matters when someone is standing at your front door. Every Preston technician is background-checked, uniformed, and dispatched with a live trackable arrival time that shows up on your phone like a rideshare. You see who is coming, what they look like, and when they will knock, before they knock. That is the Rekey Locks experience we built, and it is the reason Millbrae homeowners keep our number in their phone.

Kevin Yoon founded Preston Locksmith & Security in 2008, and the company is part of the Relay Home Co. family of independently owned and operated locations. Crews are dispatched and scheduled from the brand’s San Francisco Bay Area office and serve Millbrae locally, which means our response time to the Taylor Middle School area, Green Hills, or anywhere off Millbrae Avenue is measured in minutes, not hours.

Rekey Service in Millbrae

Rekey Service means pulling the cylinder out of each lock, swapping the internal pins to match a new key, and putting the cylinder back into the same hardware, so the lock itself never changes but every old key is dead. In Millbrae, that is usually the right call after buying a home, after a tenant moves out, after a contractor or cleaner returns the keys, or after a set of keys goes missing somewhere between the BART station and home.

The physical work takes about 20 minutes for the first cylinder and roughly 10 to 15 minutes for each additional lock on the same property. Our pricing runs $25 to $45 per cylinder, with the final number written and confirmed before anyone is dispatched. We do not charge extra for the labor of pulling the lock apart, and we do not push a replacement when the existing hardware is perfectly serviceable.

Whole-House Rekey After a Sale

The most common call we get in Millbrae is from a buyer who closed on a house near Meadows Drive and realizes three different keys exist for four doors, plus a garage side door that still opens with the seller’s old key. We rekey every keyed cylinder on the property to one new key, verify each one at the door, and leave the original brass or brushed-nickel hardware in place.

Smart Lock and Deadbolt Pairing

A rekey on a Millbrae house with a smart lock and a keyed deadbolt works fine as long as both cylinders take standard pins. The keypad lock gets rekeyed just like a traditional cylinder, so the physical backup key matches the rest of the house. The smart functions, codes, and app access are untouched.

Keyed Alike in Millbrae

Keyed Alike means setting every lock on a Millbrae property to the same key cut, so one key opens the front door, back door, garage service door, and side gate. The job involves rekeying each cylinder to a shared pin configuration, and the cost runs $25 to $45 per cylinder, depending on how many locks and whether any cylinder needs a rebuild from worn pins.

Most Millbrae houses built between 1945 and 1970 were originally keyed alike at the factory level with three or four identical Kwikset or Schlage locks. Over the years, individual locks get replaced or rekeyed separately, and suddenly the property has a ring of four keys that nobody can keep straight.

One Key for Every Door

We key alike every standard pin-and-tumbler lock on the property, walking the perimeter and testing each one with the new key before we hand it over. You do not pay more for the convenience, the per-cylinder rate stays the same, and you walk away with as many copies of the single key as you want.

Mixed Hardware, One Key

Bringing a Baldwin mortise lock on a Millbrae front door onto the same key as a Kwikset deadbolt on the back door is routine. Each cylinder gets rekeyed to the same key code, and we match key blanks to the brand so the key slides into each lock without forcing.

Trusted Brands We Service in Millbrae

Our Millbrae trucks carry pins, springs, and key blanks for Schlage, Kwikset, Medeco, and Abloy, which means most rekey jobs are finished in a single visit without a follow-up trip to pull parts. We service Baldwin, Yale, Mul-T-Lock, Sargent, and Medeco cylinders too, from standard residential deadbolts to high-security commercial cylinders on apartment buildings and retail storefronts along Broadway. Parts for the most common mid-century hardware found in Millbrae homes are on the shelf, not special-ordered, so a rekey does not drag into a second day.

Common Rekey Locks Problems We See in Millbrae Homes

• Mixed-brand cylinders on one property. The front door is Schlage, the back door is Kwikset, the garage is something else entirely, and nobody rekeyed the back any of the previous three times the house changed hands. Old keys keep working on doors the new owner never tests, which is how a stranger ends up with access six months after closing.
• Worn pin-and-tumbler sets past tolerance. Millbrae’s original 1950s and 60s locks have decades of use on the pins and springs. We open them up and sometimes find the cylinders so worn that a new key works for a week, then binds or jams. Rebuilding the cylinder with fresh pins, rather than a cheap single-cylinder rekey, is the honest fix.
• Keypad entry hardware mixed with old deadbolts. The front door has a new keypad lock, but the back door and garage still run keys from the previous owner. We rekey the old cylinders and match the keypad lock’s physical key so the whole house is on one system.
• Phone quote bait-and-switch. A caller gets a low number over the phone, then the technician arrives and announces the job is somehow double because of “security pins” or “commercial hardware” that was there all along. We lock the price before dispatch, count the locks by asking the right questions on the phone, and the price does not move after we knock.

Pricing for Rekey Locks in Millbrae, CA

We Also Serve Cities Near Millbrae

Preston Locksmith & Security handles rekey work across the upper Peninsula. We serve Millbrae, San Bruno, Burlingame, South San Francisco, and Pacifica with the same written-price-before-dispatch policy and the same background-checked technicians. If you are two minutes over the city line, call us, we are already on the road.

FAQs About Rekey Locks in Millbrae