Moving season is rekey season for locksmiths

Lockouts keep no calendar. Rekeys do. In our experience, the planned side of a locksmith’s business starts to climb in April, when homes change hands and leases turn over, and stays busy through the summer before campus move-ins close it out in August. No one publishes month-by-month locksmith demand, so take that pattern as experience rather than a statistic, and check it against your own call log from last year.

The useful thing about rekey season is that it is predictable, and the customers in it behave very differently from someone locked out of a car. That gives a locksmith about four weeks, right now, to get ready.

A rekey customer shops, a lockout customer grabs

The person locked out at night takes the first listing that looks local and answers. The person who just closed on a house is sitting at the kitchen table with a list: utilities, internet, change the locks. They search in daylight, read reviews, look at two or three shops and often call the next morning.

That changes what wins:

• A page that answers the question they are asking. Most new owners do not know that rekeying is an option, or how it differs from replacing the hardware. A plain explanation, with what happens at the visit, earns the call.
• Reviews from this spring. BrightLocal’s 2026 consumer review survey, published in February, found 74% of consumers only care about reviews written in the last three months, and 47% will not use a business with fewer than 20 reviews. Reviews collected in April and May are the ones June and July customers will read.
• Proof that you are a real, local shop. In this trade the comparison is never only against other honest shops. A real address or an honest service area, photos of your own vans and your license number where your state requires it do more work here than in almost any other trade.

Say “rekey” on purpose

Rekeying is a locksmith’s word, and in some states it is a licensed one.

Texas is the clearest example. The state lets people install pre-keyed locksets without a locksmith license, but only when there is no rekeying or other internal manipulation of the lock, and the exemptions apply only to someone who does not call themselves a locksmith. Installing a pre-keyed lockset under that exemption involves no work inside the lock at all. A licensed Texas locksmith can make that difference part of the pitch, on the site and in the ads: rekeying is work inside the lock, done by someone the state has licensed.

Texas also sets the bar for a locksmith company license at two years of full-time locksmith-related experience or approved coursework, a 48-hour basic course plus 600 hours of fundamentals. That is worth a sentence on your “about” page. Most homeowners will not know it exists.

California brings a different rule into play for landlords. The state’s Bureau of Security and Investigative Services says that if a locksmith company performs work at a single site that exceeds $500, a contractor’s license is also required. A whole-building rekey at turnover can cross that line quickly, so a California shop that holds the right contractor classification should mention it on its landlord page, and one that does not should know where the line sits before quoting.

Three customers, three messages

Rekey season brings three different buyers, and one generic page serves none of them well.

1. New homeowners. They want to know who else might have a key. The message is simple: previous owners, contractors, agents and neighbors may all have copies, and a rekey fixes that in one visit without replacing hardware. Show a per-lock price range, how long the visit takes and that you will match every door to one key if they want.
2. Tenants. A tenant may need the landlord’s permission first, depending on the lease. A short note on the page saying you can help them ask, and that you work with landlords directly, avoids an awkward call and earns trust.
3. Landlords and property managers. These are the repeat customers. A manager with forty units who trusts one locksmith calls that locksmith at every turnover. They want fast scheduling, a record of which key opens which door, invoices that fit their system and, in some states, proof of the right license for larger jobs.

Get the proof in place before June

The weeks before the rush are the time to tidy everything a careful customer checks:

• Your Google profile. Add rekeying, lock changes and master keying as services, set your service area to the towns you actually reach, and post photos of real work on real doors. Google’s guidelines say a service-area business should hide its business address, and that virtual offices are not eligible.
• Your verification. If you want Local Services Ads with the Google Verified badge running for the summer, apply now. Locksmiths go through Advanced Verification, including video interviews, and cannot run pre-badge ads while it finishes. Google puts screening at three to four weeks on average once documents are in.
• Your license number. California’s locksmith law requires the license number in paid ads and directory listings, and Texas wants it, with your company name and address, in every advertisement. Check both before spring ads go out.
• A reason to save your number. The FTC has told consumers for years to research a locksmith before they need one and program the number into their phone. A new homeowner who had a good rekey visit is exactly the person who will.

What to do this month

• Write or rewrite one page that explains rekeying in plain words, with a per-lock range and what the visit involves.
• Build a separate page for landlords and property managers, with how you schedule turnovers and keep key records.
• Text a review request after every job from now through August, naming the technician who did the work.
• Add rekeying and lock changes as services on your Google profile and check the service area against the towns you really cover.
• File for Local Services Ads now if you want the badge before July.
• Call the five property managers you have worked with before and ask about their summer turnovers.

We have collected how we approach this trade, verification and licensing included, on our locksmith marketing page. If your profile and map listing are where the spring work starts, here is how we handle local SEO for service businesses.