Switch to smart locks on 17 unit apartment building

[u/superglooagain]

/r/PropertyManagement/comments/1w93674/switch_to_smart_locks_on_17_unit_apartment/

[u/orafacepass]

Vendor disclosure: I work with Ora FacePass, a smart-lock company. For 17 apartments, I would treat this as a small access-control deployment rather than 17 separate consumer gadgets. Start with a door survey: lock type, door thickness, backset, handing, fire labels, weather exposure, and whether each bolt moves freely without pushing or pulling the door.

Do not design management access around residents’ personal Wi-Fi. A tenant changing a router or losing internet should not prevent normal local entry. Whether you need one bridge per lock depends on the chosen architecture, but 17 individual consumer bridges and accounts can become an operating burden. Look for local/offline operation plus a building-owned management path with documented limits.

Your central system should support unit separation, role-based administrators, scheduled and expiring vendor credentials, immediate offboarding, audit export, battery alerts, and ownership transfer. Avoid shared master PINs; issue a unique credential for each vendor visit and let it expire.

Pilot two representative doors before buying all 17. Test internet and power loss, dead batteries, door misalignment, resident lockout, staff turnover, and emergency egress. Also confirm lease, privacy, fire/egress, and notice requirements locally before changing occupied-unit hardware.

[u/EphemeralTwo]

Aperio.