Berkeley neighborhood · 24/7
Southside and Telegraph locksmith visits, built around the shared houses that change hands every term and the buzzer panels below campus
The blocks below campus: Telegraph Ave shops, co-ops, shared flats and houses of five or six, where keys have been circulating since long before anyone now living there signed a lease.
14 min
Avg. arrival
$89
Service call
24/7
Availability
Southside runs on an academic calendar, and so does the work here. Late August and the first half of January are when a house near Dwight Way or Channing Way replaces half its residents, and that is when the rekeys are booked. A shared house of that kind usually has a front door, a back door onto the yard, and bedroom locks added one at a time by tenants who left years ago. Rekeying is $22 to $37 per cylinder. The arrangement that works is one key for the two exterior doors, carried by everyone, and each bedroom cylinder on a key of its own. The count is taken on the call, so the figure covers the whole house instead of the first door the technician reaches.
The reason to do it at turnover is arithmetic rather than alarm. A summer sublet, a housemate who moved out in March, a copy cut on Telegraph for a partner who is no longer around: each one is a key nobody can account for, and none of them can be collected back. Repinning every cylinder retires all of them in a single visit and leaves the landlord hardware exactly as it was, which is what most leases in these blocks require. If the request has to travel through a property manager, the technician can leave a written line with the cylinder count and the figure, ready to forward. House lockouts run $109 to $189, and a fair share of them are a housemate who stepped onto the porch behind a self-locking door.
Below Bancroft Way the buildings get denser and the locks stop being only door locks. Street doors on buzzer panels that ring a phone number three tenants out of date, mailbox banks where one key has served a unit for a decade, a laundry room that everybody props open with a shoe. Those are small pieces of work added to a visit already on the block, and each gets its own line in the same agreed figure. On Telegraph Ave itself, shop doors take hundreds of cycles a day; storefront work is $139 to $435, and the recurring fault is a hookbolt that no longer reaches its keeper because the closer stopped pulling the door the last half inch. Arrival to Southside is about fourteen minutes.
Say how many cylinders the house actually has, counting bedroom doors, the back door and any shed, and whether the street entry is locked tonight, since on many of these buildings it is not and the technician can come straight up to your door.
Most requested in Southside & Telegraph
Nearby
One street over, the same van
FAQ
Asked before the call, answered here
How quickly does a van reach my part of Berkeley?+
Nineteen minutes is the average across the city. Downtown is usually 12, Southside and Telegraph 14, North Berkeley 15, Elmwood and West Berkeley 16, Thousand Oaks and Westbrae 18, Claremont 20. The Berkeley Hills run longer, around 26 minutes, because the roads above Grizzly Peak Blvd and Euclid Ave wind and the last stretch is often stairs. Albany is about 17, Kensington 21, El Cerrito 20, Emeryville 18 and Richmond Annex 24. Traffic on University Ave or a backed-up I-80 ramp can stretch any of these, and the window you are given on the call reflects conditions at that moment rather than an average.
What is included in the figure I agree to?+
Four things: the $89 service call, the labour, the parts that go into the door, and any evening or overnight hour. They are combined into one number before you say yes, which is why the service call never turns up separately at the end. The figure changes only if you ask for additional work once the technician is on site, such as rekeying the rest of the house after a lockout. That is quoted as its own line and started only after you agree to it.
Do nights, weekends and holidays cost more?+
Weekends and holidays are charged at ordinary hours. Arrival between 8pm and midnight adds $35, and arrival between midnight and 7am adds $70. Both are folded into the figure at the time you agree to it, so a $119 house lockout is $154 in the evening and $189 overnight, and the technician does not produce a different number at the door.
Will my lock be drilled?+
Only if you agree to it after picking has been tried. Residential deadbolts, apartment cylinders, mortise locks, most aluminum storefront hardware and most car doors open with picks, decoders, bypass tools or air wedges, and the hardware carries on working. Drilling becomes the option when a cylinder is already damaged, high-security, or seized from corrosion or a snapped key. In that case the technician explains what is wrong with the mechanism and what the replacement part costs, and the total stays at the figure agreed on the call.
What do I have to show before a door or a car is opened?+
For a house or apartment: photo ID showing the address, or ID plus a lease, a utility bill or addressed mail on your phone if the ID says somewhere else. For a car: ID plus registration or an insurance card, digital is fine. For a business or a lab: ID plus a lease, a business licence or confirmation from the owner or property manager. If none of that can be produced, the lock stays shut. This is the same check that protects your own door.
We rekey a student rental every August. How does that work?+
Rekeying repins the cylinders you already own so every old key stops turning, at $22 to $37 per cylinder with the $89 visit counted inside the total. For a shared house that usually means the front door, the unit door, the mailbox and any storage or bike-room lock keyed alike, so each incoming tenant carries one key. A building master, if you run one, keeps working. The receipt lists each cylinder by door, which is the form most landlords and property files want. Turnover weeks in August and January book up, so a few days of notice helps.
Can the original hardware in a brown-shingle or Craftsman house be saved?+
More often than people expect. Mortise and rim locks from the 1900s to the 1920s can be opened up, cleaned, re-sprung and rekeyed on site, and worn levers, followers and spindles are frequently replaceable. Interior doors with skeleton-key warded locks can be fitted with a working key rather than replaced. When a case is cracked or the parts genuinely no longer exist, a modern mortise body is sized to the existing pocket so the original plate, knob and door face are untouched. Which route applies is decided at the door, with the figure settled first either way.
Do you work in the BART garages and on hillside properties with gates and stairs?+
Yes to both. Car lockouts, key cutting and fob programming are done in the Downtown Berkeley and North Berkeley BART garages, in shop lots and on residential streets; say which level and roughly where the car sits when you call. For hillside addresses above Grizzly Peak or off Arlington Ave, mention the gate, the stair count and whether the garage is below the house, because it changes the arrival estimate and the tools brought up. It does not change the figure. There is no charge for stairs, gates or distance.
24/7 — nights, weekends & holidays
One call, one figure, agreed before the work starts
Calls answered 24/7 across Berkeley and the north East Bay. The $89 service call, the labour and the parts are inside the number you agree to, and nothing is added to it afterwards.