How To Select Apartment Access Systems

On yesterday’s show we talked about building perimeter access. This is part of an entire building system for your residential apartments. 

The other main question is how to provide keys for your apartments. If you use a hotel key card system then you are sending an indirect message to your residents that you don’t expect them to stay for very long and that idea can get planted in a resident’s mind early in the process. They may not say anything about it, but there is a nagging idea in the back of their mind that they should not think of this apartment like their home. It’s more like a short term stay. 

If your property truly is intended for a short term stay, then there is no problem with that idea. But if you expect people to stay for years and years, that’s probably not the idea you want to reinforce every time they enter their apartment. 

In an ideal world you would want the same database that programs the building’s perimeter to also provide the access to the apartments. 

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Episode Transcript

(00:02):
Welcome to the Real Estate Espresso podcast, your morning
child of what's new in the worldof real estate investing.
I'm your host, Victor Minash. On yesterday's show, we talked
about building perimeter access.This is part of the entire
building system for your residential apartments.
On today's show, we're going to be talking about how to provide
keys for the individual apartments, and there's many

(00:22):
different systems out there. If you use a hotel key card
system, then you're sending an indirect message to your
residents that you don't expect them to stay for very long.
That idea can get planted in a resident's mind early in the
process. They might not say anything
about it, but there's a nagging idea in the back of their mind
that they should be thinking of their apartment as a short term

(00:42):
stay rather than as their home. So you want to be careful about
the choices system that you use.If your property truly is
intended for a short term stay, then there's no problem with
that idea. But if you expect people to stay
for years and years, that's probably not the idea you want
to reinforce every time they enter their apartment.
In an ideal world, you want the same database to program the
building's perimeter and provideaccess to the building's

(01:04):
apartments. Although those systems often are
based on different manufacturers, from a safety
standpoint, if you want to change keys every time a
resident moves out, in the old days you would call a locksmith
and re key the lock. That meant using a high quality
commercial lock that could easily survive the use of
multiple re keyings. When you consider the minimum

(01:24):
service charge for a locksmith, each re key can cost several
$100 and for that reason electronic locks are much more
attractive option. There's several different
technologies used in electronic locks.
Some are wired, which are incredibly complex and costly to
install, and I don't recommend them.
Most are battery powered. That means you're going to have
to have a proactive battery replacement program, probably at

(01:47):
least on a yearly schedule, if not more often.
Some key systems are completely standalone, meaning they don't
communicate wirelessly at all. Those are pretty old school.
The newer ones have a wireless connection to a host.
You'll need to choose the wireless system carefully
because there's implications of each choice.
Wireless systems often have limited range, and wireless
systems can have shorter batterylife than standalone systems.

(02:11):
There's a lot of choices out there, and prices vary widely.
The residential locks, costing around $300, are intended for
single family homes. They don't integrate with a
central database. The more sophisticated locks are
those from companies like Schlage and Yale and Dormacaba.
They're designed to integrate with a central database.
Home automation industry has several wireless standards that

(02:33):
underpin the technology. Zigbee has been a prominent
wireless standard, and it's beenused in home automation for many
years. It has a mesh networking
capability, which means that thedevices can talk to each other
and through each other. Many major lock manufacturers
offer Zigbee compatible locks, but to fully utilize A Zigbee
lock, including for remote access and automation, you're

(02:55):
going to need a Zigbee compatible hub.
There's many different manufacturers for these.
Many Zigbee systems allow for local control even if your
Internet connection goes down, as long as the hub is still
operational. Zigbee systems are known for
pretty good battery life to the low power nature of the
technology. There are some newer ones,
specifically a technology calledThread.

(03:15):
It's a low power mesh networkingtechnology.
It's designed for smart home devices, and then there's
another layer that runs on top of that called Matter.
It's an application layer that uses Internet Protocol similar
to Wi-Fi and Ethernet. The objective of the Matter
technology is to unify smart home devices by using devices
from different manufacturers andecosystems to communicate

(03:35):
directly and reliably with each other.
The beauty of using a technologylike Matter is that it runs on
top of Wi-Fi, which is nearly ubiquitous now.
Some lock systems are using the lowest power version of
Bluetooth and these are boastingbattery lifes of up to two years
with four AA batteries instead of a proprietary battery design.
These systems have the advantagethat they connect well to a

(03:56):
smartphone. They usually have a hidden
Tumblr with an old fashioned metal key at the bottom.
Provides a backup in case of a battery failure.
Makes it easy for a property manager to respond to a call if
a resident's locked out of theirapartment.
One of the key elements is to figure out which property
management software you're goingto be using and will IT support
the integration of these building access and department

(04:16):
access systems to allow you to use a single database to program
and authorize tenants from a single interface?
Or are you going to need to input the data more than once
for each disparate system? There's a lot of new
technologies out there. My tendency is to go with the
tried and true established manufacturers like Yale,
Schlage, Dormakaba, the ones that really have significant
market share and are pretty muchguaranteed to be around for

(04:38):
years to come, where you're going to be able to get
replacement parts. Buying from a 2 year old startup
is probably not a great solution, at least not for the
long term. As you think about that, have an
awesome rest of your day. Go make some great things happen
and we'll talk to you again tomorrow.