Nearby city · 24/7
San Leandro locksmith service north up Hesperian, for 1920s and 1940s houses on wide avenues, apartment blocks on the main street and the works west of the tracks
The city over the north line, reached up Hesperian Boulevard or on the Nimitz: houses from the twenties through the forties on wide avenues, arched Spanish-revival front doors with the lock in the edge, apartment blocks strung along the main avenue, a downtown of shops, and a belt of warehouses and yards west of the railroad. Twenty-two minutes from Jackson Street.
22 min
Avg. arrival
$89
Service call
24/7
Availability
Twenty-two minutes north, on Hesperian when the lights are with it and on the freeway when they are not, and what waits at the other end is older than most of Hayward. The tract streets on this side were laid out in the fifties with a knob on the front door and nothing above it. The avenues over the line went up between the twenties and the forties, so the door is thicker, the jamb is old growth, and the lock is often a mortise case in the edge of the door behind an arched Spanish-revival face. Those cases are worth keeping and nearly always can be. What defeats them is paint and packed graphite rather than wear, so a key that has to be lifted and jiggled before it will turn is a keyway that needs cleaning, and cleaning and repinning is $24 to $39 per cylinder. Only a case cracked at the bolt gets replaced, and a new one fits behind the original plate at $109 to $289 so the front of the house is unchanged from the avenue.
Houses on those avenues carry more doors than a tract lot does. Front, back, a door from the porch into the kitchen, a garage at the end of a long strip driveway, a gate on the side path, and on the deeper lots a room built behind the garage at some point in the last fifty years. A rekey counts every one of them at $24 to $39 per cylinder, and the count is taken on the call so the figure is fixed before anyone drives north. Long ownership is the other thing these blocks share, and it shows up as a ring of keys nobody can account for: a copy to a grown son, one to a neighbor who watered the plants, two to contractors. A lockout is $115 to $199 and the door is picked open. A cylinder from 1936 that gets drilled means a plate no supplier stocks, which turns a twenty-minute job into a repair the household never asked for. A door that stopped latching after a wet week is usually a strike out of line or a hinge that has dropped, and adjusting it costs less than the lock somebody was about to buy.
Two other kinds of address sit over the line. Apartment blocks run the length of the main avenue, three stories with a street door, an entry panel and a courtyard behind, and their calls come from tenants at the end of a shift as often as from managers between leases. A unit lockout is $115 to $199 with the street door included in the figure, an ID and the lease are asked for at the door, and an owner is asked for the same thing on the same doorstep. West of the railroad the ground turns industrial: warehouses, body shops, freight yards and small plants with a man door beside every roll-up and a bar on every rear wall. A business lockout is $125 to $229, steel and storefront door hardware is $145 to $429 per door, and a rear exit device is $279 to $719 per device once it is genuinely past adjusting rather than merely dogged. A door forced over a weekend is repaired at $155 to $399, with the parts and the damage set out in plain words on the receipt for an insurer. Cars in the shopping lots and along the avenues bring lockouts at $95 to $185, and a car left with no key anywhere gets one cut and coded beside it at $139 to $379. The hour makes no difference to how a job is booked: $45 is inside the figure between 8pm and midnight and $80 between midnight and 7am.
Say whether the address is a house on one of the avenues, a unit in a block on the main street, or a business west of the tracks, and give a cross street. If the front door has its lock in the edge rather than through the face, one photo of the inside face settles what comes off the van. For a unit, give the number and say whether the entry panel is working.
FAQ
Asked before the phone comes out
How long before the van is on my street?+
Twenty-four minutes is the average across Hayward, because the van works out of Jackson Street instead of being sent over from another city. Downtown and B Street run about 16 minutes, Jackson Triangle and Burbank 18, Prospect Hill and the Cherryland and Ashland strip 21, San Leandro 22, San Lorenzo 24, Mt. Eden and Tennyson and Southgate 26, Eden Shores 28, Hayward Highlands and Fairway Park 31, and Castro Valley and Union City around 28 to 31. The hill above the campus and Castro Valley are the slowest runs on this map, and that is said on the call rather than left to you watching the street. The window you get by text is drawn from wherever the van sits when you ring, not from that average.
Does the lock have to be destroyed to get the door open?+
Almost never, and never without you saying so first. Picks, decoders and bypass tools handle apartment cylinders on Tennyson Road, builder deadbolts on the Burbank tracts, the mortise sets on the slope above downtown, aluminum shopfronts, most car doors and most safes, and the lock is left doing its job afterward. The exception is a cylinder that is high-security, already smashed, or welded shut around a snapped blade. When that is what the door is, you hear it plainly, you hear what would go back in, and the choice is yours. The number does not move either way.
What is inside the number I hear on the phone, and what could add to it?+
The $89 service call, the labor, whatever part goes on the door, and the night hour if there is one, rolled into a single number. Stairs, a gated lot, a buzzer lobby, a unit at the back of a complex, a long strip driveway on a San Leandro avenue: none of that moves it. The one thing that can add is work you decide on once the technician is there, such as putting new pins in the back door while the front one is standing open. That gets a number of its own out loud, and it starts when you say so and not before.
Is it more at night, on a weekend or on a holiday?+
Saturday, Sunday and holidays cost the same as a Tuesday afternoon. The clock is the only thing that changes it: $45 goes on between 8pm and midnight, $80 between midnight and 7am. Both are folded into the number you hear, so nothing surfaces later. A house lockout that is $115 in daylight is quoted as $160 at eleven at night and $195 at four in the morning, and the receipt matches what you agreed to.
I rent. Can I get my own door opened without calling the landlord first?+
Yes. About half of this city rents, and a tenant is the customer, not a complication. For a lockout, bring photo ID that shows the address, or ID plus something on your phone that ties you to the unit: a lease page, a utility bill, a rent receipt, addressed mail. Give the building and the unit number on the call so the van is not circling the block looking for a door. Nobody is telephoned about you, and no permission from an owner is needed to put you back inside the place you pay for.
I own units and need them rekeyed between tenants. How does that work?+
Rekeying is counted per cylinder, so a fourplex with front and back doors is eight cylinders and comes back as one number. Each unit can sit on its own key with a single management key above the set, so what you carry is one key rather than a ring. Old keys come back to you in labeled bags to check against whatever a tenant handed over. The receipt lists every door by unit. A manager acting for an owner who lives elsewhere can approve the work with a management agreement or a text from the owner, and the receipt can be addressed to either of you or both.
Our building has a buzzer panel and a lobby door. Is that something you handle?+
Yes, and on the apartment blocks along Tennyson Road and Mission Boulevard it is a large share of the week. A door that releases when the buzzer sounds and then never catches again is usually an electric strike drifting out of line or a deadlatch that has stopped grabbing, not a dead panel. Entry panels, strikes, closers, mailbox banks and shared laundry doors are all carried on the van. Anything larger than a single door gets counted in person before a number is put on it.
Our house in Burbank still has the hardware the builder put on in the fifties. Does all of it have to come off?+
Usually not. The flat streets in Burbank, Glen Eden and Mt. Eden are full of original knob sets and slim deadbolts that turn perfectly well and only need repinning so keys from four owners ago stop working. Three things are worth changing: a cylinder with real wear in it, a deadbolt whose throw no longer reaches the frame, and a strike screwed into trim instead of the stud behind it, which is the single detail that decides whether a door survives a kick. Which of the three applies to your door is said before anything is unscrewed.
Do you come to Southland, the BART lots and the college parking?+
Yes, and a good share of the car work happens in exactly those places: Southland Mall, the Hayward and South Hayward BART parking, the Chabot College and Cal State East Bay lots, the Executive Airport, a carport behind an apartment block, a driveway on a Burbank street. Name the lot and give a landmark, a row or the color of the car, because Southland on a Saturday is a great deal of parking. A gated garage needs someone able to let the van through the gate. None of it changes the number.
24/7 — nights, weekends & holidays
The van is already in town, and the number comes before it moves
Hayward, San Lorenzo, Cherryland and Ashland, San Leandro, Castro Valley and Union City, 24/7, holidays included. Describe the door, hear one number with the $89 visit inside it, and the lock gets opened without damage wherever it can be. The receipt says what the call said. It runs the same way whether the lease is in your name or the deed is.