If you've just bought a house, it's sensible to take the precaution of having one of the local residential locksmiths replace all of its exterior door locks, to ensure that no one that the previous owners gave copied keys to can ever access your new home. Here are some steps to take if you plan to do this.

Look at your home insurance policy

If you've set up your home insurance policy for this house (or have at least decided which home insurance policy you'd like to purchase), you should read this policy and see if it mentions anything about exterior door locks. The reason for this is that some home insurance providers require their policyholders to use specific locks on their exterior doors to lower the risk of any burglar successfully tampering with these locks and breaking in.

If, for example, the home insurance policy you've chosen says that you must have deadbolts on all your house's exterior doors and you mistakenly ask the residential locksmith to fit deadlatches instead, this might make it impossible for you to make claims related to home burglaries in the future. Even if you realise your error soon after the locksmith finishes fitting the wrong locks, you would still have to get them to remove the ones they had just installed and replace them with the correct locks. This could make the replacement of these locks much more expensive and add an extra hour or two to the process. As such, it's important to take a look at this insurance policy's fine print before the locksmith does this task for you.

Talk to the residential locksmith about other security items they could also add to these doors

When arranging for the locksmith to do this job, you should take this opportunity to talk to them about any other security items that they could also add to your new house's doors, after they're finished replacing their locks. For example, it might be worth having them fit security chains on each of the exterior doors. When fitted correctly, these chains can make the process of conversing with strangers to whom you've opened your door a bit safer, as it is much harder for an intruder to push through a door whose chain is not undone.

Getting this done at the same time as the lock replacements will mean you won't incur an additional call-out fee and will help to make your new house feel that much more secure; the latter is important, as it can take time to feel relaxed in a new property, but if you've taken multiple precautions to secure your house, you should find you begin to feel at ease quite quickly.