{"id":2413,"date":"2026-08-27T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-08-27T05:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/oun.fi\/?p=2413"},"modified":"2026-08-27T09:02:59","modified_gmt":"2026-08-27T06:02:59","slug":"locking-system-in-a-housing-company-what-a-buyer-must-check","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/oun.fi\/en\/locking-system-in-a-housing-company-what-a-buyer-must-check\/","title":{"rendered":"Locking System in a Housing Company: What a Buyer Must Check"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In August 2026, the Finnish Real Estate Federation raised a topic that almost always falls into a buyer&#8217;s blind spot in property transactions: a housing company&#8217;s locking system patent protection may have expired, and that changes the entire security equation. This is not a theoretical risk. It can mean a concrete bill for you right after you move in.  <\/p>\n<h2>What does patent expiration actually mean?<\/h2>\n<p>Many Finnish housing companies use a locking system whose patent protection has expired. According to the Real Estate Federation&#8217;s blog, once the patent lapses, the manufacturer&#8217;s exclusive right to produce key blanks ends. After that, third parties may legally manufacture and sell compatible key blanks.  <\/p>\n<p>We&#8217;re talking specifically about the Abloy Sento locking system, whose patent protection expired on 19 June 2026. Sento is widely used in Finnish apartment buildings and housing companies, so it&#8217;s entirely possible that the property you&#8217;re considering has exactly this system. <\/p>\n<p>In practice, this means that a system that previously relied on compatible key blanks simply not being available anywhere else is now open. Key copies can be made elsewhere than at the shop authorized by the housing company. The housing company loses control over how many people have a working key.  <\/p>\n<p>Replacing the locking system is not a cheap job. The costs are shared among all shareholders, including you, if you&#8217;ve just bought an apartment. <\/p>\n<h2>Which documents contain the information?<\/h2>\n<p>Before making an offer, request and read these:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Property manager&#8217;s certificate<\/strong> \u2013 check whether the locking system is mentioned and whether replacement is recorded in the plans or long-term maintenance plan.<\/li>\n<li><strong>PTS, the long-term maintenance plan<\/strong> \u2013 does locking system replacement appear in the budget outlook for the coming years?<\/li>\n<li><strong>Housing company&#8217;s maintenance charge history and budget<\/strong> \u2013 has the investment been budgeted for, or will it come as a surprise?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The Finnish Association of Real Estate Agents has pointed out that <a href=\"https:\/\/oun.fi\/en\/errors-in-property-managers-certificates\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">the information content of property manager&#8217;s certificates<\/a> needs updating, and buyers do not always receive sufficient information about the property&#8217;s true costs and future financial obligations. If the property manager&#8217;s certificate or PTS contains an entry about the locking system or its replacement, take it seriously. It&#8217;s a signal worth reacting to before making an offer.  <\/p>\n<p>If the documents say nothing, that doesn&#8217;t mean everything is fine. It may mean the matter hasn&#8217;t yet been recorded anywhere. <\/p>\n<h2>How do you identify the risk in practice?<\/h2>\n<p>Ask the property manager or agent directly: what locking system is in use in the building, and when was it installed? If the answer is vague or no one knows, that&#8217;s already a sign in itself. <\/p>\n<p>If the system is old, find out whether its patent protection is still in force. The manufacturer&#8217;s name and the system model will help here. The information can often be verified directly from the manufacturer or a locksmith shop.  <\/p>\n<p>You can also check patent validity yourself in the Finnish Patent and Registration Office&#8217;s (PRH) public patent database. If you don&#8217;t want to investigate alone, most locksmith shops will tell you for free over the phone, as long as you know the system&#8217;s manufacturer and model. <\/p>\n<p>Also ask about the key register. Does the housing company have an up-to-date list of who has keys and how many? If there is no register or it&#8217;s years old, practical control has already been lost regardless of the patent situation.  <\/p>\n<h2>Whose <a href=\"https:\/\/oun.fi\/en\/responsibility-for-maintenance-in-a-limited-liability-housing-company\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">responsibility<\/a> is replacement?<\/h2>\n<p>The locking system is a shared structure of the housing company. The replacement decision is made at a shareholders&#8217; meeting, and the costs are covered either by collecting an additional maintenance charge or by a loan whose servicing costs appear in the maintenance charge. An individual shareholder cannot force the housing company to replace the system, nor can they refuse to pay their share if the decision has been made.  <\/p>\n<p>This means you&#8217;re also buying the risk that already exists in the building. If replacement is ahead and you don&#8217;t know about it before the sale, it can get expensive quickly. <\/p>\n<h2>Is it worth switching to digital locking?<\/h2>\n<p>When a housing company has to replace the locking system anyway, it&#8217;s worth considering the direction. Instead of a purely mechanical system, digital access control is now available, where access rights are managed electronically and physical keys no longer need to be tracked manually. <\/p>\n<p>Security-sector operators, such as BLC Turva, recommend switching to a digital solution at the latest when the patent expires, so that the security level doesn&#8217;t have time to drop. The advantage of a digital system is control: the rights of a lost key or a moved-out resident can be revoked immediately, and the entire locking system doesn&#8217;t need to be replaced because of one lost key. <\/p>\n<p>In practice, this is a major investment for the housing company, just as traditional mechanical replacement is, and the decision always requires processing at a shareholders&#8217; meeting. For a buyer, this means one additional question: has the housing company already taken a position on which direction the locking is being taken, and does it show in the budget or PTS. <\/p>\n<h2>Buyer&#8217;s checklist before the sale<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>Find out what locking system is in the building and when it was installed.<\/li>\n<li>Ask whether the system&#8217;s patent protection is in force.<\/li>\n<li>Request the property manager&#8217;s certificate and read the long-term maintenance plan carefully.<\/li>\n<li>If the property manager&#8217;s certificate or PTS mentions the locking system, find out what it means in euros and timeline.<\/li>\n<li>Ask the property manager directly: is replacement being considered in the coming years?<\/li>\n<li>Find out whether the housing company has an up-to-date key register.<\/li>\n<li>If the housing company uses Abloy Sento or another older locking system, find out whether its patent protection has already expired.<\/li>\n<li>Ask whether the housing company has also weighed digital access control instead of mechanical replacement.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-group has-ast-global-color-5-color has-text-color has-background has-link-color wp-elements-1 is-layout-constrained wp-block-group-is-layout-constrained\" style=\"border-width:8px;background-color:#0f172a;margin-top:40px;margin-bottom:40px;padding-top:60px;padding-bottom:60px\">\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-text-align-center has-ast-global-color-5-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-2\">Are keys missing?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-paragraph\">There are countless details worth checking when buying an apartment. If you want to buy with awareness and not just hope, <strong>bring in OUN\u00ae before submitting your offer.<\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-paragraph\">OUN\u00ae reads the site documents for you and delivers a plain-language analysis within 24 hours. We are 100% on your side &#8211; we don&#8217;t sell the property to anyone. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-buttons is-content-justification-center is-layout-flex wp-container-core-buttons-is-layout-3e41869c wp-block-buttons-is-layout-flex\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-button\"><a class=\"wp-block-button__link has-background wp-element-button\" href=\"https:\/\/oun.fi\/en\/order-analysis\/\" style=\"border-width:8px;background-color:#21b4a6\">Order an OUN\u00ae analysis<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In August 2026, the Finnish Real Estate Federation raised a topic that almost always falls into a buyer&#8217;s blind spot in property transactions: a housing company&#8217;s locking system patent protection may have expired, and that changes the entire security equation. This is not a theoretical risk. It can mean a concrete bill for you right [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":2412,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center 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This is not a theoretical risk. It can mean a concrete bill for you right&hellip;","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/oun.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2413","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/oun.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/oun.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oun.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oun.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2413"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/oun.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2413\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2420,"href":"https:\/\/oun.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2413\/revisions\/2420"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oun.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2412"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/oun.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2413"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oun.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2413"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oun.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2413"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}