Locksmith for Milwaukee Neighborhoods

A locksmith that comes to your Milwaukee neighborhood

A locksmith for Milwaukee neighborhoods has to know that a lockout in the Historic Third Ward and a lockout on a Sherman Park porch are different jobs. We are a mobile locksmith, so the shop comes to you: a house or car lockout usually takes a few minutes once we arrive, and a rekey or a new car key takes 15 to 60 minutes. Tell us the neighborhood and the cross streets, and we tell you the price before we head out.

Milwaukee is a city of about 577,000 people and about 200 neighborhoods, and the buildings change every few blocks. Each part of the city has its own kind of building, and each building type comes with its own lock and key needs.

Duplexes, Polish flats, and two front doors

Much of Milwaukee lives in two-family houses. The classic Milwaukee duplex has an upper and a lower flat, each with its own entrance, and often a shared side door and a shared basement. The Polish flat, a small cottage raised to fit a second unit below it, is a Milwaukee house type you see all over the South Side; most were built between about 1890 and 1915.

For a locksmith, that means a lot of shared doors. When a tenant moves out of the upper flat, the owner often wants the upper door and the shared side door rekeyed, while the lower tenant keeps a key that still works on the side door. We set that up so each tenant opens their own unit and the shared doors, and nobody else (rekeying). A first lock rekey starts at $59, and each additional lock on the same visit starts at $20.

Alley garages and back gates

A lot of Milwaukee houses face the street, while the garage sits on the alley behind them. Garage side doors, overhead door locks, and gate padlocks are where old keys pile up. If you bought a house and got a ring of keys with no labels, we can rekey the house and the garage side door to one new key, so the alley door stops being the forgotten one (garage and sliding door locks).

Condos and lofts in the Third Ward and downtown

The Historic Third Ward is an old warehouse district, and many of its buildings are now condos and lofts. Downtown and in the Third Ward, the building owns the main entrance, the garage gate, and the fob system, so we work on what is yours: the unit door, the mailbox, and your car. If you are locked out of a condo unit, show an ID with the address or have the building manager confirm, and we open the unit door (house lockout).

East Side and Riverwest rentals

Near the UW-Milwaukee campus on the East Side and across the river in Riverwest, many homes are older houses split into apartments. Turnover is high, and every move-out leaves keys behind. Rekeying between tenants usually makes more sense there than buying new locks, because the old hardware is often solid. For owners of several units, we keep a simple key plan so a whole building can be rekeyed in one visit (property managers).

Bay View, Walker's Point, and the South Side

In Bay View, on the lakefront south of downtown, older homes keep their original doors, and some still have old mortise locks set inside the edge of the door. We repair or rekey those when we can, and replace the cylinder or the lock when the hardware is past saving (lock repair). In Walker's Point, many small businesses and restaurants sit in converted industrial buildings, and a business lockout or a key broken in a back door can hold up a whole morning of work (business lockout).

Car keys anywhere in the city

On the street, in a Brady Street lot, or in a driveway in Washington Heights, the car key work is the same: we cut and program the key where the car is parked. A spare key with one working key starts at $69, and a key when all are lost starts at $119 (lost car keys). Milwaukee winters add their own trouble: a frozen door lock or a key that snaps in a cold cylinder, and we deal with both at the car (broken car key).

Milwaukee and the suburbs around it

We cover the whole city and the suburbs that border it. To the west are West Allis and Wauwatosa, and Shorewood is to the north on the lake. To the south are St. Francis and Cudahy on the lake and Greenfield inland. The same prices apply in the city and in the suburbs.