It's usually meant as a joke when I tell a client the hardest part of my job is getting the locks opened, but lately I've been wondering if there isn't some truth to the statement.
Real estate agents show many St. Paul houses in a week and the numbers can mount into the hundreds quickly. Every house has its little quirks and many of them have quirky locks.
- There's the traditional deadbolt that does what it's designed to do. Insert the key, turn it clockwise, and open the door. Reverse the process to secure the door when leaving. This one is easy and causes no frustration or embarrassment!
- The non-traditional deadbolt is another animal entirely. That deadbolt may be installed incorrectly and one has to turn the key counter-clockwise to open the door. . . or one might have to jiggle the key in the lock . . . or one might have to step on the second board from the left at the same time as turning the key counter-clockwise!
- The locks that have tape over them are pretty obvious. Don't put a key there!
- The handle locks come in the greatest variations to re-lock. Some have push buttons. Some have turn buttons. Some re-lock with the key. Some have to have the handle pushed in and turned.
- The especially challenging handle lock is the one that allows the key to turn and turn and turn until miraculously a click occurs and the door opens.
- The best ones are the broken locks. These come in all kinds of permutations. Some have cylinders that spin and never catch. Some open but never really unlock so if you go out and pull the door behind you, you're locked out.
- The trick locks are a challenge as well. These are most often found on a high end patio door. This lock requires the lever handle to be lifted up at the same time the deadbolt latch is turned! I would never have figured that one out by myself. It took an instruction manual to learn its proper functioning.
- The final lock style is the one found on older doors. This lock can be opened with a key from the outside but has push buttons on the faceplate (the narrow edge of the door) which permanently locks or unlocks the outside lock. This door is always unlocked from the inside and always locked on the outside (unless the faceplate buttons are changed). Key access from the outside only opens the door. It does not unlock the door. Usually this door has a place for the key to be turned and a thumb lever to unlatch the door when the key is turned. Voila, one can enter!
My challenge is to note which doors are locked and how they are locked when we enter a home. When exiting, the doors are pulled shut, locked, and tested for being locked . . . always. My assumption was most St. Paul real estate agents did the same thing. However, the complaints from some of my listings has led me to believe others don't operate the same way or have the same knowledge of locks.
Agents have struggled trying to figure out how to re-lock the door that is already locked on one of my listings with the old style lock! They never tried it to see if it was locked without the key. Another agent locked the screen door where the lockbox was, went out the back door and locked that with a push button lock. My client couldn't get into the house nor could any other agents who wanted to see the house. Entrance required crawling through a window because the showing agent did not know about locks and was concerned about securing the home! Thank goodness that agent didn't go into the house and then into the yard and pull the door shut behind. They would have been locked out by the very door she couldn't figure out how to lock!
The lesson to me was to clearly give instructions on how to lock every door on all of my listings. I now instruct my sellers to tape a note over the door lock that is not being used. We use duct tape in bright neon colors to tape over obsolete locks. Neon colors . . . now that should get their attention!
Italy is facing a different problem with locks caused by love:
From NY Times:
http://tinyurl.com/yu8brp
Posted by: Ed Kohler | August 06, 2007 at 12:25 PM