New Home Security Checklist: The First Week, the First Month, and the System Decision

The first week: invalidate old access

When you close on a house, an unknown number of keys, codes, and remotes remain in other hands: previous owners, their relatives, cleaners, dog walkers, contractors, and every agent who accessed the lockbox. This is not hypothetical risk; in Bureau of Justice Statistics burglary data, nearly 4 percent of unlawful-entry burglaries where a resident was present involved an offender who used a key to get in. The fixes are cheap and fast:

Rekey or replace every exterior lock. Rekeying (a locksmith changes the pins so old keys stop working) is the budget option; full replacement makes sense if the hardware is worn or you want to upgrade to higher-security cylinders or smart locks anyway. Count every door: front, back, garage side door, basement, and any outbuilding sharing a key.

Reset the garage. Clear the opener's memory of all paired remotes and re-pair only your own, and change the keypad code. Garage openers are the most commonly forgotten access path in a handover, and the garage often has an unlocked door into the house.

Change every code that conveyed. Alarm panel master and user codes, smart lock codes, gate codes, Wi-Fi router admin password if the router stayed. If a previously monitored alarm remains installed, call the provider: accounts do not transfer automatically, and an alarm tied to the seller's account is doing nothing for you.

Walk the perimeter once with fresh eyes. Note every ground-level window latch, the state of exterior lighting, where the water and electrical shutoffs are, and which door you would break into if you locked yourself out; that door is your weakest point, and it deserves the best hardware.

Test life-safety devices now, not eventually. Press the test button on every smoke and CO alarm and replace batteries or expired units immediately. This outranks every security task on this page, and it is a ten-minute job.

Most existing panels from common brands can be monitored again if they are not installer-locked; how to get monitoring for an existing alarm system covers who to call first.

The first month: harden the building and learn what you inherited

Doors first. BJS burglary data identifies damaging or removing a door as the most common method in forcible-entry burglaries, which is why door hardware is the highest-yield hardening spend. The standard upgrades: a solid or metal-clad exterior door where a hollow one exists, deadbolts on every exterior door, and reinforced strike plates with 3-inch screws that reach the framing rather than the trim. The same door-hardening logic covered in our apartment door security checklist applies to houses, minus the landlord constraints.

Windows second. Confirm every accessible window locks and actually latches (paint and settling defeat many), and add inexpensive secondary locks or pin stops to ground-floor and basement windows. Clear shrubbery that screens windows from the street; concealment is a burglar's friend, and trimming it is free.

Lighting and sightlines. Motion lighting at every approach, dusk-to-dawn fixtures at doors used after dark. While you are at it, decide what a passerby can see from the sidewalk: unpacked-box mountains visible through windows advertise both new occupancy and new electronics.

Inventory what the sellers left. Cameras, doorbells, sensors, panels: factory-reset anything that stays (otherwise the previous owner may retain app access to cameras inside your house, which is reason enough to reset before first use), and evaluate whether the hardware is worth keeping. An inherited wired panel can often be taken over by a new monitoring provider; ask providers directly, since takeover support varies by panel.

Document your property. Photograph serial numbers of electronics, tools, and bikes as you unpack; it takes minutes during a move and is painful to reconstruct later for police reports or insurance.

While walls are open, a low-voltage prewire to doors, cameras, doorbell and panel avoids cutting drywall later; see security prewire for new construction. Once you know which doors you actually use, how many security cameras you need counts cameras by entry point. When you do add cameras, start at the entry points; where to place security cameras collects the makers' mounting guidance.

Then, and only then, the system decision

Buying a security system during closing week is how people overbuy: you do not yet know which doors you actually use, where packages pile up, or what the neighborhood's real patterns are. After a few weeks you will, and the decision gets cheaper and better.

The decision tree is short. First, DIY or professionally installed; the cost logic is laid out in DIY vs professional monitoring cost. Second, monitored or self-monitored: is professional monitoring worth it covers the honest math, and the short version is that monitoring buys dispatch when you cannot respond yourself, which matters most for households that travel, sleep deep, or leave the house empty on predictable schedules. Third, the budget envelope: realistic equipment and monthly ranges are in home security cost per month.

A new home is also the one moment insurance paperwork is already open: many insurers discount premiums for monitored systems, so ask yours what qualifies and what documentation they want before you choose a provider, not after.

If you land on wanting professional monitoring quotes, our quote tool takes a short questionnaire about the house and pulls quotes from monitoring providers, which is a faster path than repeating your details across sales calls. Either way, the sequence stands: locks and codes in week one, the building in month one, the system when you know the house.

For children who come home alone, named keypad codes and door-open alerts tell you when they arrive; see home security for latchkey kids.