Moving house is organised chaos. There’s the truck, the boxes stacked to eye-level, the family or friends roped in for the heavy lifting, the inevitable search for the kettle halfway through the day. By the time you’ve wrestled a sofa through a narrow door and worked out which box holds the bed sheets, the locks on your new home are probably the last thing on your mind.
They should be the first. And in Glenroy specifically — a suburb where residential break-ins run 64% above the Victorian average and have trended upward in recent years — rekeying your locks before the first night is not just sensible home management. It’s the most direct security investment you can make on moving day.
I’ve been working locks in Glenroy and across Melbourne’s north for years, and this is the checklist I’d hand every person moving into a Glenroy property, whether it’s a post-war brick veneer on Hilton Street, a townhouse off Wheatsheaf Road, or a ground-floor apartment near the new Glenroy Station precinct.
Why the Previous Keys Can’t Be Trusted
The most common assumption homeowners make when they get the keys at settlement is that the set handed over is the complete set. It almost never is.
Consider the key history of a typical Glenroy property. Glenroy has a large stock of homes that have changed hands several times since they were built in the 1950s and 1960s — many of the original Housing Commission builds, now privately owned, with three, four or five previous owner occupants. Each occupant copied keys as needed — for family members, regular tradespeople, house-cleaners, neighbours trusted to hold a spare. Copies were cut at the old hardware kiosks on Pascoe Vale Road, at the key booth in the Wheatsheaf Road shops, or at any one of dozens of retail key cutters across Melbourne’s north. None of those copies comes back to the property file at settlement.
For a more recent property or a newer townhouse in one of the current Glenroy infill developments, the key history is different but no cleaner: a sales agent held a key set for open for inspections, tradspeople accessed the property during a pre-settlement renovation or maintenance visit, a building manager may have held an ongoing set. The vendor may have issued spare keys to family in the months before settlement that were never fully recovered.
A rekeyed property starts your occupancy clean. Every pin stack in every cylinder is repinned, so every prior key — however many were cut, wherever they went, whether they were returned or not — no longer works. The only operational keys are the new ones cut at rekeying.
Pro Tip: Book the rekey appointment for moving day itself, or the day before — not “sometime soon.” The first week in a new home fills up faster than you expect, and a property you haven’t rekeyed is operating on the key history of everyone who lived there before you.
The Glenroy Rekeying Checklist: Every Entry Point
A proper move-in rekey covers every external entry point, not just the front door. Here’s the full checklist for a typical Glenroy property.
Front entry deadlock
The obvious one. The deadlock cylinder is repinned to a new key pattern. If the existing cylinder is an older unit — common on Glenroy’s 1950s–70s housing stock — this is also the right moment to assess its grade. Cylinders that predate modern AS 4145 grading standards don’t meet current security specifications for an external residential deadlock. If the hardware is worn, stiff, or showing its age, a cylinder replacement rather than a rekey is the better approach.
Security screen or screen door, if present
Many Glenroy homes have an older security screen door fitted to the front entry — often a steel grille door from the 1990s or early 2000s. These have their own cylinder, separate from the primary deadlock, and it needs to be rekeyed or changed as part of the same visit. A security screen with a working key that isn’t keyed alike to the front door defeats the convenience of a unified key system and often gets left unlocked as a result — which defeats the screen’s security purpose.
Rear or back entry door
On Glenroy’s post-war houses — particularly the brick veneers with the extended rear additions common in this suburb — the back door off the kitchen or laundry is a standard access point. It needs its own deadlock assessed and rekeyed. If it’s currently fitted with only a passage set (handle latch, no deadlock), fit a deadlock at the same visit.
Sliding door or rear glass door
Glenroy’s renovated homes and townhouses frequently have a sliding glass panel from the living area to the back garden or courtyard. The original builder’s latch is a closure mechanism, not a security lock. An anti-lift device and a secondary lock are the minimum security additions for a sliding door entry.
Internal garage door
If the property has an attached garage — common on the larger Glenroy blocks — the door from the garage to the interior of the home is a critical junction point. A passage set here means anyone who can access the garage has effectively bypassed the primary security of the house. Fit a proper deadlock, and rekey it to the master key.
Side gate, if key-operated
Some Glenroy properties have a key-operated lock on the side passage gate providing access to the rear garden. Include it in the key unification.
Keying alike
All of the above, rekeyed to a single common key. One key, every door. The practical benefit is that you actually use all the locks every time — because using a single key for the front door and a different one for the back is an inconvenience people adapt around by leaving one unlocked.
Post-War Glenroy Homes: The Lock Hardware Question
Glenroy’s 1950s and 1960s brick veneer stock — particularly around the original Housing Commission releases in the suburb’s centre and north — presents specific lock hardware considerations that a newer home doesn’t.
Original cylinders from that era are long past their security specifications. The pin stack configuration, the cylinder tolerances, and the key profile don’t approach what a current Grade 5 or Grade 6 cylinder under AS 4145 provides. If a Glenroy home hasn’t had its lock hardware updated in the last fifteen to twenty years, the external deadlocks are almost certainly not meeting current security standards.
The door frame and strike plate configuration on 1950s–60s construction is also worth checking at the time of rekeying. Original strike plates on these properties are typically face-mounted — a flat plate with a morticed hole, fixed to the door lining with short screws. This is adequate for day-to-day use, but under a forced kick, the force goes through the bolt into the face plate and out through the short screws into the door lining timber, which is soft compared to the structural jamb behind it. Upgrading to a full-box strike with 75–100mm screws into the structural timber is a twenty-minute job that substantially changes the kick resistance of the door.
Pro Tip: On a Glenroy post-war home, check whether the strike plate is face-mounted (flat plate, visible screws, less than 25mm deep) or box-mounted (deeper pocket, bolt supported on three sides). A box strike upgrade at the same time as a rekey costs very little extra and makes a material difference to forced-entry resistance.
Townhouses and Newer Glenroy Properties
Glenroy’s active infill development — the townhouse projects coming up on former single-lot post-war blocks throughout the suburb — produces a different key situation than an established resale property.
A new Glenroy townhouse delivered off the plan from a developer has passed through the hands of the developer’s site team, the building surveyor, the real estate sales team (for open for inspections during the sales period), and possibly a settlement agent for pre-settlement inspection access. The key profile cut to the property during the build may also have been a project master operated by the builder across multiple properties in the same development.
The good news: newer lock hardware in recently built Glenroy townhouses is typically to a better standard than the older housing stock. The cylinder brand is often a recognised Australian brand on a current keyway. The question is key control — who else has a key on this profile — not the quality of the hardware itself. A rekey closes that question for a new townhouse owner just as cleanly as for a 1960s brick veneer.
A Pascoe Vale Road-Area Move-In: What We Found
I was called to a move-in rekey on a mid-century brick home on a residential street just back from Pascoe Vale Road — a family buying their first Glenroy property, third-generation sellers. The settlement files showed one set of keys handed over.
Front entry: a cylinder from the mid-1990s, non-restricted keyway, moderate wear. Security screen door: its own cylinder, different profile from the front entry — two keys just for the front. Rear door off the laundry: a passage set, no deadlock. Sliding glass door added during a 1990s rear extension: builder’s face latch, no secondary lock, no anti-lift. No key for the side gate — padlocked with a combination lock, combination unknown.
We rekeyed the front entry and screen door to a restricted-keyway cylinder, fitted a deadlock on the rear laundry door, added an anti-lift pin and a keyed track lock to the sliding door, all keyed alike. New combination lock on the side gate to the customer’s chosen combination. The family received three sets of keys.
The seller had handed over one set. We don’t know how many keys were cut on the old profile across three generations of ownership. Now it doesn’t matter.