What It Costs to Rekey a House in Palm Beach County

Published rekey ranges, and how to read them

National cost guides put rekeying at $20 to $50 per cylinder. South Florida runs higher, at $30 to $70 per cylinder, which tracks with the cost of operating anywhere between Jupiter and Boca Raton.

A regional locksmith on the Treasure Coast publishes a more useful shape than a flat per-cylinder number: roughly $105 to $155 for the first door including the service call, then $45 to $65 for each additional lock in the same visit. That structure, one higher first door and much cheaper cylinders after it, is how this trade actually bills almost everywhere.

High-security cylinders are their own tier. Medeco, Mul-T-Lock and Schlage Primus are published at $65 to $125 per cylinder, because the pinning is more involved and the key blanks are restricted, meaning the keys themselves are controlled rather than cut at a hardware counter. If you inherited these with a house in a gated community, you will pay more and you are getting more.

Every number in this section is a third-party published range from outside our own service area. They are here so you have a benchmark, not because they are our prices. Palm Home Pros does not publish prices, and we quote your specific doors before we touch them.

When new hardware beats rekeying

Published deadbolt installation runs $100 to $200 for a single-cylinder deadbolt and $150 to $250 for a double-cylinder one, with a Treasure Coast locksmith publishing $150 to $295 per lock. A straight lock change across Florida is published at $50 to $250 depending on the hardware chosen. Smart lock installation is published at $200 to $400.

The tipping point is usually condition rather than arithmetic. Coastal hardware in Palm Beach County does not age gracefully. Anything east of the Intracoastal, and everything on the barrier island from Palm Beach down through Ocean Ridge, Gulf Stream and Highland Beach, takes salt-laden air every single day. A cylinder that grinds, a key that has to be jiggled, a finish that is bubbling: those are signs the lock is at the end of its life and rekeying it just buys you a few months.

The other reason to replace is capability. If you have cleaners, a pool service, a caregiver, a rental turnover crew or family arriving before you do, a battery-powered keypad lock lets you issue a code and remove it later without ever cutting a key. Battery keypad locks sit outside any wiring trade, which is why they are a clean fit for a handyman visit. Hardwired access control is a different animal entirely and is not something we take on.

A reasonable middle path for a lot of houses here: put a keypad on the door people actually use, rekey everything else to one key, and be done.

What actually drives the number on a Palm Beach County house

Count cylinders, not doors. A front door with a knob and a separate deadbolt is two cylinders, not one. Then add the side door, the door from the garage into the house, the patio slider hardware, the mailbox, and in a condo building the storage cage or bike room if your key opens it. People routinely underestimate their own house by half.

Housing stock matters more than people expect. The 1970s and 1980s condo belt around Century Village, Kings Point, and the Lakes of Delray has enormous quantities of original patio slider hardware in profiles that are no longer made. Sometimes the fix is a rekey. Sometimes the honest answer is that the part does not exist any more and the assembly gets replaced. That is a conversation we would rather have with you standing there than in a change order later.

Association rules matter too. Plenty of Palm Beach County communities govern the finish and style of front-door hardware because it faces a common corridor or a street the board cares about. Mailbox and gate keys are often association property and are handled through the management office rather than by a technician. Some buildings require a unit key on file with the office, which means the rekey is not finished until the office has the new one.

Access is the last variable, and it is a scheduling cost rather than a lock cost. Gate credentials, a certificate of insurance on file with the management company, and loading dock or elevator windows in the taller buildings all shape which morning the work happens.

When people in this county actually rekey

At closing. You do not know how many copies of that key exist, and neither does the seller. Realtors, prior cleaners, the last owner's adult children, a lockbox that was on the door for four months. Rekeying on move-in day is the cheapest peace of mind in the entire transaction.

At the end of a season. Seasonal households hand out more keys than they remember: a cleaning service, a pool service, a home watch person, a neighbor who takes in packages, a relative who stayed a week in February. A rekey in April or May resets the whole list to zero without confronting anybody about it.

At rental turnover. If you rent out a unit, whether long-term or by the week, the key that opened the door for the last guest should not open it for the next one. This is the single most repeatable lock job in the county and it takes minutes per unit when it is batched.

After a lost key, obviously. Also after a caregiver change, a roommate moving out, or a separation. There is nothing dramatic about it and nobody who does this work thinks twice about the reason. You do not have to explain yourself when you book it.

Locksmith licensing in Florida: what exists and what does not

Florida has no locksmith license. There is no state program that issues, renews, or disciplines one, which surprises most people who move here from the northeast. A 2025 bill, the Florida Locksmith Services Act, would have created a state program with background checks, insurance requirements and identification cards. It died in subcommittee in June 2025 and is not law.

County-level programs are gone as well. A 2021 state law preempted occupational licensing to the state, and grandfathered local licenses expired on July 1, 2025. Miami-Dade formally stopped issuing locksmith licenses on that date and cited the statute directly. Palm Beach County publishes no locksmith category at all: it does not appear on the county regulated trades list.

That puts the screening on you, and the questions are simple. Ask for proof of insurance. Ask whether the technician coming to your door has been background checked. Ask for a written quote before the first cylinder comes off. Ask whether the company will provide a keyed-alike option so you are not carrying five keys for one house. A company that answers all four without hesitating is telling you something useful.

One honest caveat about scope. Rekeying an existing cylinder sits clearly outside the county's certificated trade categories. Boring a fresh hole in a door for hardware that was never there is closer to the county's window and door specialty category, and we check that line before we quote rather than after. If a job crosses it, those are licensed trades we refer out.

How we quote a rekey

Tell us how many doors, what hardware is on them, and whether you want everything on one key. Photos of each lock help more than a description does, because the profile of the cylinder is usually visible in a picture and tells us most of what we need.

You get a number before we start. If we pull a cylinder and find it corroded past the point where rekeying it would hold, we stop and requote it as a replacement instead of quietly charging you for both. You decide which way to go.

We are insured for the services we perform, our technicians are background checked, and we cover Palm Beach County from Tequesta and Jupiter down through Boca Raton and out west. Same-day service when the route allows. Call (645) 235-4470 or send photos and we will come back with a quote.