Parkside sits 2.4 kilometres from the Adelaide CBD. That proximity — and the suburb’s relatively affordable rental stock compared to inner-north suburbs — makes it a natural landing zone for university students. UniSA’s city east campus is a 15-minute walk. The University of Adelaide’s North Terrace campus is a short bus ride via Unley Road. Students from Flinders University’s city campus commute in daily. The suburb’s mix of older terrace houses converted to multi-room rentals, semi-detached cottages near Greenhill Road, and smaller units backing onto the park lands makes it one of the inner southern suburbs where student share houses have been a fixture for decades.
That’s a genuinely convenient place to live. It’s also a security context that has some specific features worth understanding — because the way students typically rent (multiple occupants, high turnover, shared keysets, minimal engagement with the landlord on security matters) creates vulnerabilities that a solo professional tenant in the same property might never experience.
This guide is for Parkside students who are about to move in, are currently in a share house and have never thought about their security situation, or have recently had something go wrong and want to understand what to do next.
Why Student Rentals Have a Different Security Profile
It’s not that students are careless — most aren’t. It’s that the structure of a typical student rental creates security gaps that don’t exist in other tenancy types.
High occupancy and lots of keys in circulation. A three-bedroom terrace in Parkside might house four or five students across a 12-month tenancy. Each tenant gets a key. When a tenant moves mid-year — to go home for semester break, to transfer to a different campus, to move in with a partner — what happens to their key? In most student rentals, the honest answer is: nobody knows. The landlord may not have a key register. The remaining tenants may have no way of knowing whether all keys from departing housemates have been returned or copied.
Over the lifecycle of a property that has been renting to students for five or ten years, the number of key copies in circulation for a single lock is potentially significant. This isn’t hypothetical — it’s a pattern I encounter regularly in properties across the inner southern suburbs.
High-traffic visitor environment
Student houses have a higher volume of visitors than most other household types — friends staying over, parties, study groups, partners effectively living in part-time. This is normal student life and is not inherently a security problem. But it does create a less clearly defined perimeter around who has been inside the property, and increases the surface area of casual opportunity for something to go missing.
Property often left with poor security habits
A student running to campus for an 8am lecture is not thinking about whether the rear door is deadlocked. A house where six people all assume someone else locked up before the last one out is a house where the door is regularly on the latch rather than properly secured.
Rental properties with older hardware
The Parkside terrace stock — Federation and Victorian cottages along streets like Sturt Street, Vine Street, and the residential blocks running east of Fullarton Road — is characterised by solid bones and often-neglected hardware. A property that last had its locks properly maintained five years ago, and has had four sets of tenants cycle through in the meantime, is unlikely to have hardware in optimal condition.
What to Check in the First Week
If you’re moving into a Parkside student rental and want to actually understand your security situation, there are specific things worth checking in the first week — not after something goes wrong.
Front door deadbolt: Does it exist? Is it a separate deadbolt (a second lock above or below the handle), or is the “deadlock” the same mechanism as the doorknob? A doorknob with a lock inside it is not a deadbolt. A true deadbolt has a separate key-operated lock that throws a solid bolt into the door frame independently of the handle. In older Parkside terrace properties, the front door may have only the original period handle set — which is a lever or passage latch, not a deadbolt.
Does the bolt shoot fully? Turn the key and physically push the bolt back with your finger while the door is open. It should resist pressure and shoot firmly to its full travel when you turn the key. A bolt that only extends halfway, or that can be pushed back with moderate finger pressure, is not adequately securing the door.
The rear door
In a Parkside terrace or cottage, the rear access is often through the kitchen or a laundry. Check what hardware is on this door. A passage latch only — the kind of knob that doesn’t lock — is essentially an unlocked door. A deadbolt is the minimum standard. A rear door on a passage latch is the entry point for the majority of residential burglaries in the inner suburbs.
Side or lane access
Many Parkside properties have a side gate that gives access to the rear yard. Check whether this gate has a keyed lock or just a barrel bolt or latch. A barrel bolt that can be reached over or under the gate is not a security measure.
Windows at ground level
Victorian and Federation terraces in Parkside often have large single-hung or double-hung sash windows on the ground floor. Test them: do they close fully? Do the latches actually engage, or are they painted over, broken, or present but non-functional? A sash window with a broken latch is openable from outside with a flat blade in under 20 seconds.
Pro Tip: On day one of a new tenancy, document every lock’s condition in a short video on your phone — each door, each window, dated. This protects you at end-of-lease and gives you a baseline to compare against if something goes wrong.
The Key Question: Has This Property Been Rekeyed Recently?
This is the single most important security question you can ask before or immediately after signing a lease on a Parkside student rental — and most tenants never ask it.
Under the South Australian Residential Tenancies Act 1995, landlords are expected to provide reasonably secure premises. Consumer and Business Services SA’s guidance supports rekeying between tenancies as best practice. In reality, many Parkside landlords — particularly those managing older houses independently rather than through agencies with consistent procedures — do not rekey routinely.
Ask the property manager or landlord directly: “When were the locks last changed or rekeyed, and is there a record of how many key copies are in circulation?” If the answer is vague or unknown, that’s important information.
You are entitled, with landlord permission, to arrange a rekey of the property at your own expense. In most cases, a rekey of a standard residential property — one or two external door locks — costs between $80 and $180 through a licensed locksmith. Given the alternative of never knowing how many previous tenants have a key that opens your front door, this is a reasonable investment.
Some property managers will arrange a rekey at their own cost if asked — particularly if framed as a maintenance matter rather than a request. It is worth asking before spending money yourself.
If You’re Already in a Share House That Hasn’t Been Sorted
Many students reading this will be mid-tenancy rather than pre-move-in. You’re already in the property, you’ve never thought about this before, and now you’re wondering what the situation actually is.
The most important action in this scenario is a conversation with your housemates about closing procedures. A house rule that the last person out checks and deadlocks both the front and rear door — not just pulls it shut — costs nothing and significantly reduces your exposure. The back-and-forth of “I assumed someone else locked up” is how unlocked houses stay unlocked all day.
If you have specific concerns about the key situation — a former housemate who left badly, a key that was never returned, a lock that doesn’t seem to be functioning properly — contact the property manager in writing (email), describe the concern, and ask what can be done. Written communication creates a record.
If the landlord declines to act on a legitimate security concern and you experience a break-in, that written record becomes evidence of whether the landlord met their obligation to provide reasonably secure premises.
A Job on Vine Street
I was called to a property on Vine Street — a quiet residential street in Parkside’s eastern section, a block of older semi-detached terraces that have been student houses for as long as anyone in the area can remember. Four students, mid-year tenancy change, one of the outgoing housemates had taken his key back but two others had moved out earlier in the year and nobody was certain whether their keys had been returned.
When I inspected the property, the front door had a functional deadbolt but the rear door — a solid timber door opening to a shared lane at the rear of the block — had only a passage latch. The rear lane was accessible from the street. There was no lock on the rear door at all, just a handle you could push open.
We rekeyed the front door (new cylinder, three keys issued), fitted a deadbolt to the rear door, and fitted sash stops to the two ground-floor windows. Total job time: about two hours. The property manager had been contacted by the students beforehand — to their credit, the agency paid for the rear door deadbolt as a maintenance item, and the students covered the rekey of the front.
The student who called me said something afterward that I’ve heard in various forms many times: “I kept thinking we should sort this out, but I assumed someone else was dealing with it.” In a share house, nobody is dealing with it unless someone decides to.
What to Do If You’ve Had Something Stolen
If you’ve had a theft from a Parkside student rental, there are specific steps worth taking immediately.
- Report it to SAPOL. Even if you don’t expect the item to be recovered, a police report creates a record that supports an insurance claim and contributes to suburb-level crime data. Reports can be made online at police.sa.gov.au for non-urgent matters.
- Notify your property manager in writing. Describe what happened, when, and how the entry appears to have occurred. This is both appropriate tenant conduct and a record for any subsequent security improvement request.
- Consider whether a rekey is warranted. If the theft involved an entry through a door (not a window) and there was no sign of forced entry, take the possibility seriously that a key was used. A rekey is the appropriate response to a suspected key-based entry.