Worst Places to Hide a Spare Key (After 4,000 Break-Ins)

I was a locksmith for thirty-five years and I never caught a burglar. I'm the man who shows up the morning after. In that time I changed about four thousand doors, and the single most common line in my notebook was not "pried" and it was not "glass". It was "key" — a key that was sitting outside the house, in a spot the owner was sure was clever. This video is the five worst places to hide a spare key, why each one fails, and the three places a locksmith actually accepts. THE FIX, IN NINETY SECONDS 1. Go outside and bring your spare key in. Kitchen drawer. 2. Write down every person who has ever needed to get into your house when you weren't there. 3. Ask of each name: do they need to get in WITHOUT calling me first? Usually that's one name. 4. That person gets a real key, in their hand. Not a rock. A spare key should live with a person, not in a place. THE FIVE WORST 1. Under the doormat — the double bluff fails because checking it costs him one second. 2. The fake rock — flat moulded base, a thumbnail slot, and it skitters when you nudge it. Worse: an empty one tells him a key exists. 3. The ledge over the door — the key leaves a clean stripe in the dust, and you can only see it from the path. 4. The flowerpot — a clean circle of concrete under it, soil disturbed at one edge, a scuff arc on the step. 5. The meter — around the side, out of sight of your own window, and a man crouching there looks like a meter reader. ALSO ON THE LIST: the mailbox, the porch light, the magnetic box in the wheel well, the barbecue, the birdhouse, the fake sprinkler head — and the key you gave somebody eleven years ago and never got back. THE THREE THAT WORK 1. A person. A neighbour about ten minutes away, with a label on the key. 2. A lockbox BOLTED through the wall into framing or masonry — never one hanging off the handle, and change the code when people stop coming around. 3. A keypad deadbolt: you hand over a code you can delete, not an object you have to get back. If your spare has been outside for years, bring it in AND ask a locksmith what a rekey costs. Rekeying is not replacing the lock — the cylinder comes out and the pins change, and the old key stops working. If you rent: bring the outdoor key in, and ask your landlord for a rekey in writing. WHAT I WROTE DOWN After I retired I put the things I ended up saying in doorways into three guides — The One Afternoon Door, The $1,500 Phone Call, and Nothing To Buy (thirty-seven fixes that cost nothing, plus a letter for tenants). Three guides, $27, instant PDF, 30-day refund. It is not a free download and I'm not going to pretend it is: raykessler.vercel.app Ray Kessler · Locksmith, 1989-2024 · The Four Thousand Doors