Lock Rekeying in Knoxville, TN

Why keys pile up in a renter city

About a third of occupied Tennessee homes are rented, and in Knoxville renters are more than half of households. In Fourth and Gill, where large frame houses were converted to apartments, a house often has a shared front door plus a door for each unit. Rekeying the shared door changes the key for everyone in the building, so it is the owner's decision; each unit door can be rekeyed on its own.

What rekeying does to an older lock

Rekeying resets the pins inside a cylinder so the old keys stop working and a new key does. The lock body, trim and door stay as they are. Census estimates put 33.5 percent of Knoxville's housing before 1960, so many doors here carry decades-old locks. On a door with a mortise lock, the key works a separate cylinder that screws into the lock body, and that cylinder is what gets rekeyed.

Moving in, moving out and the lease rules

Knox is among the counties where the Uniform Residential Landlord and Tenant Act applies (T.C.A. § 66-28-102). At move-in, ask the landlord in writing whether the locks were rekeyed after the last tenant.

One provision touches keys directly. Under § 66-28-517(g), when a tenancy is terminated because of domestic abuse, only the perpetrator may be evicted, and the landlord may remove that person from a lease in effect. Those rights depend on a court order of protection that meets the statute's conditions, a copy delivered to the landlord, and written agreement by the victim and all adult tenants not to let the perpetrator return. If the perpetrator leaves the lease, ask the landlord in writing to rekey and settle who pays. This is general information, not legal advice.

Who rekeys, and what to send

• New owners, since earlier owners, contractors and neighbors may still hold copies
• Landlords, between tenants
• Anyone who lost a key ring with an address on it

In a lock rekeying request, count the doors, mark which is a shared entrance, name the lock type on each (knob, deadbolt or mortise) and say whether one key should open all of them. Worn-out hardware may call for lock replacement instead. For the neighborhoods behind these examples, see the Knoxville page.