Moving week is two households passing through the same doorway in opposite directions: one pulling out with boxes, one pushing in with them. In the middle of the logistics — the vans, the meters, the school forms — the lock on that door changes owners too, and nobody plans for it.
This is the handover checklist for both sides of that week: what the departing household owes the door, and what the arriving one should not assume.
The departing household: close the access book
Leaving is not quite done when the last box is out. The access model the home ran on needs closing as deliberately as it opened:
Before the final lock-up
- Account for every key and credential. The spare with the neighbor, the code the cleaner knows, the card in the kitchen drawer, the fingerprint of the relative who used to check in. Lists beat memory here — the same access register habit from ordinary household life, run one last time as a closing inventory.
- Return the home to a neutral state. On smart locks, that means removing all personal credentials from the lock (a task the platform handles; the model’s documentation lists the steps) and — the practical part — leaving the property’s own access for the incoming household through a channel the two parties agreed to in the sale or lease paperwork, not through a code shared across the previous regime.
- Leave the mechanical keys with the keys. Every instance of the override key that the departing household holds goes back to the property’s key set. A mechanical key that walks away with the movers is the one credential no amount of platform housekeeping can retire from offsite.
- Hand over the entry’s documents. If the property had a smart lock installed, the incoming household benefits from its model documentation — installation notes, method list, battery type. Our product documentation is collected for buyers through the Download Center; for any brand, the sheet matters more on move-in week than on purchase week, because the new household is learning a door they didn’t choose.
The arriving household: audit before assuming
New homes arrive with the previous owner’s access habits still installed. The first week should close every question the sale didn’t:
- Key audit on day one. Count the mechanical keys, verify the override works, and note that “staging keys” held by agents or trades may still be out there. On a home with a smart lock, add the credential side: which methods exist, who (if anyone) remains enrolled, and how the administration access works. A factory-reset or fresh enrollment is the clean start, and it’s worth doing before furniture defeats the mood.
- Check the door as it is today. Not as it was during viewings. Move-in week is the right moment for the three-point thickness note, the latch line, and the alignment test from our alignment guide — because every lock upgrade you might consider later, and every decision you make about the door this month, starts from those measurements. If the previous household ran the entrance well, the check is a formality; if not, it’s the finding that saves a winter of sticking.
- Decide what “our” entry looks like. The new household gets to choose its access model from scratch — including whether the existing hardware stays. We wrote the entry-audit checklist for exactly this moment: twenty questions about habits.
Two families moving into neighbouring houses with identical doors can end up with completely different setups; both are correct if the method matches the people.
When the lock itself is changing hands
If the property’s smart lock stays with the house — the common arrangement, since the hardware is fitted to the door — the handover is precisely defined: the departing household removes its users and leaves the platform in an administrative state the new owners can take over, within whatever the model’s documentation describes for that transfer. If the lock is leaving with its owners (rare, since most hardware is door-specific), the incoming household is choosing fresh anyway — and our five-measurement guide is the purchase’s first step.
The 48-hour rule: anything either household needs from the other about the door — a code, a key, a document — should be settled within 48 hours of the handover moment. After that, channels close, intentions fade, and the new owners start guessing about a door they now own.
For agents and property managers
Anyone who handles properties between households can make this checklist routine: standard key and credential inventory at listing, verified override at inspection, documented device handover at settlement. It takes minutes per property and removes the class of first-week complaints that nobody can resolve, because the previous occupant is gone. Property managers running rentals see the same handover in miniature on every tenancy change — and our tenant-side notes cover what the incoming side of that arrangement cares about most.
Common questions
Should I change the locks when I move in?
At minimum, retire every credential a previous occupant could have retained and verify the mechanical override — that’s the real “change” on a smart lock. If the home has an old mechanical lock, a fresh cylinder or full replacement serves the same purpose. The guidance changes with evidence of who held access before; it shouldn’t be fear-driven either way.
What if the previous owner left no lock documentation?
Identify the model from the hardware (usually marked on the body or inside the battery compartment) and request its documentation. For our own models, buyers and owners can pull documentation through the Download Center; for any brand, the manufacturer’s material is the reference — not the memory of agents or neighbors.
How should moving-day access for movers, cleaners and agents work?
All three are temporary users by nature. The tidy pattern: temporary credentials issued for the moving window and retired the day it closes — on our models, capacity for 100 names means even a busy move-in week can give each person their own access, then take it back cleanly. It’s the same principle as the packing-day access logic, applied to the door instead of the boxes.
Managing properties between households?
Tell us your market and portfolio profile. CaremLock supplies documented ranges with per-person credential models for distributors, property managers and project buyers — so every handover starts from facts, not from a stranger’s leftover code.
Or explore the deadbolt range and contact the team.