Managing Your Houses Out of State- Door Locks

[Heather Luu]

Hi, my husband and I are getting ready to move out of the state due to a military move. We own two homes here in TN and are getting ready to rent them out. For those who manage your properties out of state, what door locks would you recommend? On our first house we have a standard key and have an extra key onsite in a lockbox in case for any maintenance and lockouts. For our second home, we installed a Yale lock that has a physical key and a keypad. With the Yale lock, I can see who goes in and out of the house and when our tenants leave, we can always change the codes from a far. Any inputs and advice on this? With the Yale lock, would you give a physical copy to the tenants or just a code and keep the physical key in a lockbox onsite in case of any emergencies? I only plan to manage these two from out of state until we're able to refinance our second home as we're losing money on this particular house for rent as we bought this home last year. 

[Drew Sygit]

@Heather Luu first, make it more efficient by only worrying about deadbolts.

There is actually very LITTLE additional protection a lock handset offers in addition to a deadbolt.

On the properties we manage, we remove all keyed doorknobs and just use passage locks. 

Benefits:

1) Tenants can't lock keys in house, they have to use their key to lock the deadbolt.
2) Cheaper to rekey or replace locks (only deadbolt!)

So, go with a good solution on the deadbolt.

Screw a lockbox in a wall near the door for an emergency physical key.

Find a locksmith that can rekey the doors between tenants - put ALL locks on the same key.

Most electronic locks warn you when the battery is getting low. Monitor this to alert tenant to change batteries. Have a clause in your lease that landlord is NOT responsible for battery issues - tenant is. Also make it VERY expensive for tenant if you need to give them lockbox code for manual keybox.