If I could automate only one thing in a rental, it wouldn’t be pricing or guest messages. It would be the front door. Handing off keys is the single task that forces you to be in a specific place at a specific time, and that’s exactly the kind of task that quietly turns a side business into a second job.
Disclosure: this post contains Amazon affiliate links. If you buy through them, I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. I only recommend what I use or would use. I’m not a financial advisor, and this isn’t financial advice.
Price your key handoffs by the hour
I like to put a dollar figure on my time before deciding what to automate. I wrote about the idea in evaluating your dollar per hour, and it applies perfectly here.
Take a hypothetical short-term rental with eight check-ins a month. If meeting a guest, or driving over to leave a key somewhere, costs 45 minutes door to door, that’s six hours a month. Add the cleaner who needs to get in, the guest who loses the key, and the plumber who shows up while you’re at your real job. Call it eight hours a month, conservatively.
If your time is worth even $30 an hour, that’s $240 a month, or close to $2,900 a year, spent standing at a door. A good smart lock costs somewhere between about $100 and $300. It pays for itself in the first month. And the dollar figure undersells it, because those hours aren’t flexible. They land on a Tuesday at 3 p.m., when you’re supposed to be somewhere else.
That’s the real reason I care about this. Freedom isn’t only about how much money comes in. It’s about how many of your hours are spoken for by somebody else’s schedule.
Three questions I’d ask before buying any lock
Can I control a code from somewhere else?
This is the whole point. You want to create a guest’s code from your phone, have it start working at check-in, and stop working at checkout. A plain keypad lock with no connection works for a monthly tenant, but for nightly guests you’ll be driving over to change codes, which defeats the purpose.
Can I see who came in?
An entry log sounds like a minor feature until the day you need it. A guest says they couldn’t get in; a neighbor says there were ten people at the unit Saturday night. The log settles both conversations.
Does it lock itself?
Guests forget. Cleaners forget. An auto-lock that re-engages the deadbolt after a short delay removes a whole category of problems.
If you’re renting the place you host, which is how rental arbitrage works, add a fourth question: can I take this off at the end of the lease and put the original lock back? That means choosing a lock that fits the existing holes, and keeping the landlord’s hardware in a safe spot. The landlord will also want a way in, so plan on giving the property manager a permanent code.
The lock I’d start with for one or two units
For someone with one or two units who’s managing things personally, I’d look at the Philips 4200-series WiFi keypad deadbolt with lever. It’s been going for around $110 on Amazon. According to Philips, it connects straight to 2.4 GHz WiFi with no separate hub, supports one-time codes plus recurring and scheduled ones, keeps a timestamped activity log in the app, and can auto-lock after anywhere from 10 to 180 seconds. It also takes fingerprints and a physical key, and it comes with a matching lever handle.
Two honest caveats. It runs on 8 AA batteries, so battery checks become part of your cleaning routine. And I couldn’t confirm that it connects directly to Airbnb or to property management software, so you’d create each guest’s code in the app yourself. With one or two units, that takes a couple of minutes per booking and I’d be fine with it.
When I’d pay more for automation
Past three or four units, those couple of minutes add up, and one forgotten code turns into a bad review. That’s the point where I’d switch to a lock that integrates with the booking platform. Airbnb’s own smart lock integration, which it opened to all US and Canada hosts in 2024, works with Schlage, Yale and August locks. When a booking confirms, the lock gets a unique code good only for that stay, and Airbnb sends it to the guest automatically. If you list on several platforms, a property management system connected to a lock service does the same thing across all of them.
This is a rule I try to follow in any business: do it by hand while it’s small enough to learn from, then automate the moment it becomes repetitive. I wrote more about that in using automation to increase your productivity.
Don’t forget the closet
Every rental needs one locked space that guests can’t get into: spare linens, cleaning supplies, extra paper goods, and in an arbitrage unit, the landlord’s original lock. A regular padlock works, but then your cleaner needs a key. A fingerprint-and-keypad padlock like the Anweller P15 lets you hand the cleaner a code and change it from your phone. It’s the same idea as the front door, just smaller.
A smart lock is a security device, so treat it like one
Moving your front door onto an app means your phone and your account are now part of the lock. A few habits I’d consider non-negotiable:
- Use a unique, long password for the lock’s app and turn on two-factor authentication if it’s offered.
- Name every code by person and date, so the log actually means something.
- Delete old codes. Scheduled codes should expire on their own, but check anyway.
- Don’t manage the lock over sketchy public WiFi. I covered a few simple protections in being proactive about getting hacked.
For the practical side of this, with the tables and the math laid out line by line, read Best Smart Locks for Airbnb Arbitrage (2026): What Fits a Rented Door over on vendbuddy.io.
The bigger lesson
An illustrative example (not a real person): Priya runs two short-term rental units while working full-time in sales. In year one, she’s the key handoff, and she misses two client calls because of it. She adds smart locks, a cleaner with a rotating code, and a battery check on the turnover list. Her income from the units doesn’t change much. What changes is that her Tuesdays belong to her again. That, to me, is the actual return on a $110 lock.
The same logic applies well beyond rentals. The businesses I like best are the ones where the physical asset works while you’re somewhere else: a lock that lets guests in, a vending machine with a card reader that tells you what sold without a visit. If you’re renting in a managed building and you get along with the property manager, it’s worth asking what they’d think about a machine in the lobby. VendBuddy (full disclosure: VendBuddy is my company) has a blog that walks through how those placements get pitched.
This week: write down every task in your side business that requires you to be in one specific place at one specific time. Pick the one that happens most often. That’s your first thing to automate.
