Sunnyvale West and El Camino: sixties apartment courts a block behind a mile of small shops

These courts are forty years older than the towers on the north edge, which changes what breaks rather than what it costs. Entry is a pedestrian gate on a keyed latch, or a magnetic lock fed by a panel that rings a cell phone instead of an apartment. That arrangement works until the phone holding the entry code is the phone sitting on the kitchen counter behind a locked door. Panel and gate work is $149 to $429, covering a strike that no longer releases, a directory still listing tenants who left years ago, a laundry room keypad, and enrolling fobs where an owner has upgraded a court to readers. The owner or the manager books all of that. A resident books their own door and their own credential, and nothing beyond it.

The everyday call from these courts arrives around seven in the evening and is simpler. A unit lockout is $125 to $219, and a court gate crossed on the way to your door is part of that figure rather than a second charge. These buildings were bought one order at a time, so a row of unit doors usually shares a keyway family with a deadbolt added above the knob at a repeating height, which is why a unit number alone is often enough for a price to be settled on the phone. Rekeying is $28 to $45 per cylinder. What gets missed in a court is always something no single tenant thinks of as theirs, the laundry, the mail alcove, the trash enclosure, so those are counted while the figure is being worked out instead of surfacing afterward.

In front of the courts, El Camino Real is a mile of dry cleaners, taquerias, nail salons and phone repair counters, each with an aluminum front and a steel service door at the back. A business lockout is $139 to $249, storefront door locks are $165 to $469 per opening, and a fire exit device is $299 to $769 once it has genuinely failed rather than merely been left dogged since lunchtime. Cars at the curb and in the strip lots behind are $105 to $199 to open, and a fob programmed at the vehicle is $89 to $195. Nineteen minutes is the estimate. El Camino at half past five is what lengthens it, and if the drive is going to run long you hear that at the same time as the price.