Shalimar has a lot of rental housing: duplexes off Meigs Drive, single-family rentals around Lake Lorraine and Longwood, apartments near Eglin Parkway, and homes leased by the year to families who move often. Every turnover is a lock question. This is the locksmith for landlords who manage those doors and for the tenants who live behind them.
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Rental turnover in Shalimar has a rhythm. Leases tend to end in summer, families move in and out around the school calendar, and a landlord with three or four units can face several turnovers in the same month. Every one of those turnovers is a question about keys: who has them, who should have them, and what to do about the ones nobody can account for. This page is written for both sides of the lease, because the lock on a rental door belongs to a relationship, not just to a person.
A note before anything else: we are locksmiths. When we describe what landlords and tenants typically can and cannot do, we are describing general practice and the questions we get asked. We are not attorneys, we do not give legal advice, and Florida landlord-tenant law and your specific lease control what is allowed. Read the lease, and when a situation is contentious, talk to an attorney before you talk to us.
When a tenant moves out, the landlord receives a set of keys. That set says nothing about the copies made at a hardware kiosk over the lease, the key given to a dog walker, the one a boyfriend kept, or the one under the mat that everybody knew about. The only way to reset access is to rekey the locks so that none of those keys work anymore.
Rekeying is not replacing. We keep the existing lock hardware, pull the cylinder, change the pins to match a new key, and hand the landlord the new keys. It is faster and far less expensive than new locks, and it leaves the door looking exactly as it did. We rekey the front door, back door, garage side door, and anything else the tenant had a key to, including mailboxes, storage cages and laundry rooms where applicable. On a duplex or a small building we can do every turnover unit in one visit.
Rekey after the outgoing tenant has surrendered possession and before the incoming tenant receives keys. That window can be as short as a morning. Landlords in Shalimar who manage several units often schedule us for the move-out inspection so the rekey happens the same visit, and the incoming tenant gets keys that have never been in anyone else's pocket.
Key control means knowing exactly how many keys exist for a door and who holds each one. On a rental, that usually breaks down like this: the tenant gets two keys, the landlord keeps one, and the lease says no other copies. In practice it never stays that clean, which is why the rekey at turnover matters more than the key count at move-in.
For landlords who want tighter control, restricted keyways are the answer. A restricted key cannot be duplicated at a kiosk or a hardware store because the blank is not sold to the public; copies require the authorization card that came with the system. That does not prevent every abuse, but it means the number of keys in the world for a unit is the number the landlord issued. Combined with a turnover rekey, it makes key control real rather than aspirational.
A landlord with a duplex, a fourplex or a handful of scattered single-family rentals around Lake Lorraine and Longwood should carry one key, not a ring. A master key system pins each unit so the tenant's key opens only their unit and the landlord's master opens all of them. At turnover we change the tenant key for one unit without touching the master or any other unit. If the master is ever lost, the entire system can be re-pinned, which is a bigger job but a defined one.
Key return is the moment most deposit disputes about keys begin. The tenant hands over what they have. The landlord counts. The count is short by one, or a mailbox key is missing, or a garage remote has vanished. The tenant says two keys were issued. The landlord's file says three. Nobody wrote anything down at move-in.
The fix is a key receipt at move-in that lists every key and remote issued, signed by both parties, and a matching key return receipt at move-out. We are happy to stamp keys with a unit number and count, which makes the receipt easy to reconcile. When keys are missing at return, our advice to landlords is always the same: rekey and document, rather than argue about a key that may or may not exist.
Whether the cost of a rekey can be charged against a deposit is governed by Florida statute and the lease, not by us. What we can do is make the charge defensible: a dated invoice for the rekey of that unit, listing which doors were rekeyed and how many new keys were issued. Landlords who rekey every turnover as a matter of course usually treat it as a cost of doing business rather than a deposit deduction, and tenants who get a fresh key on move-in day tend to appreciate it.
This is the question that comes with the most heat, so here is the general shape of it as we understand it from years of these calls, with the reminder that an attorney, not a locksmith, is who should answer it for your situation.
Tenants have leverage before the lease is signed and very little after. The questions worth asking a Shalimar landlord at showing time are simple. Were the locks rekeyed after the last tenant, and when. How many keys will be issued and who else holds one. Is there a deadbolt on every exterior door, including the one from the garage. Are the windows and sliding doors lockable. If the answers are vague, a request to have the unit rekeyed before move-in is reasonable and inexpensive, and many landlords will agree to it if asked before the lease is signed.
Once you live there, keep the keys you were issued, do not make copies the lease forbids, and if a key is lost, tell the landlord promptly so a rekey can happen. A lost key that goes unreported is how a burglary becomes a dispute about who was responsible.
Landlords who manage rental homes in the older neighborhoods near Meigs Drive and the newer subdivisions toward Longwood have told us what works, and it looks like this.
Short-term rentals on the bayou side of Shalimar turn over weekly instead of yearly, which makes physical key handoff impractical. Keypad locks with codes that change for each guest solve the handoff problem, but they still need a mechanical backup, a fresh code between stays, and a way for the cleaner to get in without carrying the guest code. We install and set up those locks, and we still recommend a full rekey of the mechanical cylinder once or twice a year, since a keypad lock with a mechanical override is only as controlled as the override key.
Tenants locked out of their own unit are a common call, and we handle them, but with a step the tenant should expect. We will ask for identification and something that ties the tenant to the address, such as a lease, a utility bill or mail. We do this for every lockout on every rental because it protects the tenant who is inside from the person who is not supposed to be. Landlords who want us to open a unit for a tenant who cannot produce identification can authorize it directly.
Duplexes and small multi-unit buildings cluster along the streets between Eglin Parkway and the older residential grid near the town center, and those buildings almost always benefit from a master key system and cluster mailbox key control. Single-family rentals around Lake Lorraine, Longwood and toward Ocean City tend to have more exterior doors, a garage and a fenced yard, which means more locks per turnover and a stronger case for keying everything alike. Waterfront rentals on Poquito Bayou and Garnier Bayou add dock hardware and marine finishes to the checklist. Whatever the property, the turnover rekey is the one line item we would never skip.
Ready when you are. Landlords: tell us the unit count and the turnover date. Tenants: tell us what your lease says about locks and we will work within it. Call (850) 740-4436.