Saginaw, MI 路 Member since 2016 路 13 posts 路 2 votes
I recently had a tenant lock herself out of her house at 9:30 at night. Luckily, I was available and only live a few miles away to come unlock it for her. Does anyone have a good system in place to deal with this. I鈥檝e talked with our local locksmith in town and they only take calls during normal work hours. Me going over to unlock it even if there is a fee is not ideal to say the least. Any comments would be appreciated!
@Brad Spies we did the same thing as @Kyle J. and we remove any locking door knobs, so you can't lock without a key on the deadbolt. I have never had a lock out since then. We also include a lock-out policy in our lease that charges for us to come over. I would avoid electronic key pad locks, because then you need to deal with batteries.
Another tip on the door knob we use a commercial grade keyless knobs. Since they are turned multiple times every day, you don't want to go cheap on a door knob. For deadbolt, we use Kwikset Smartkey. I can rekey in 5 seconds so no more lock smiths or expensive landlord locks.
You can hide a lockbox on the property, then give the combo and location to a tenant that gets locked out. You can still charge a fee for this, because you then have go over there to put the key back and change the combination. Downside is when tenant knows there is a lockbox, they may not feel bad getting locked out. Best option, IMO, is to use a knob that can only be locked with a key, like a deadbolt, or install electronic, keycode locks.
As a former renter/tenant we always made a spare key, used a magnetic key box, and found a hidden place. I just tossed it when I moved out. My landlords never had a problem with it but it depends on how trust worthy your tenant is.
An electronic door lock trumps everything but costs money.
I had a tenant lock themselves out once then I changed the keyed/locking door knobs on all my properties to the hall/closet passage door knobs (the kind without the keyed locks) so that the only way to lock the door was from turning the deadbolt from the inside. Completely eliminated the problem from ever happening again.
@Brad Spies we did the same thing as @Kyle J. and we remove any locking door knobs, so you can't lock without a key on the deadbolt. I have never had a lock out since then. We also include a lock-out policy in our lease that charges for us to come over. I would avoid electronic key pad locks, because then you need to deal with batteries.
Another tip on the door knob we use a commercial grade keyless knobs. Since they are turned multiple times every day, you don't want to go cheap on a door knob. For deadbolt, we use Kwikset Smartkey. I can rekey in 5 seconds so no more lock smiths or expensive landlord locks.
The lockout addendum within the lease works well, especially when you review it with the tenants up front and set that expectation. The tenant is responsible for contacting a locksmith in the event of a lockout.
I encourage the tenants to make duplicates as well. I also use the kwikset smartkey, so that makes it very easy to change locks during a turnover. In that case, it doesn鈥檛 even matter if the tenant doesn鈥檛 return all of the keys that were made.