The Successful Landlord Blog

Like clockwork on Sunday evening at 7:30pm, I received a call from a tenant complaining that their air-conditioning unit was not working. I should mention that summer in central Florida is on its way and the temperature hit a sweltering 80°F that afternoon. For some people (mostly my tenants) that means freak-out time. God forbid a bead of sweat were to appear on their forehead.

I called the tenant back on Monday morning and let her know that I have no problem coming out to take a look at her air-conditioning unit but that I wanted to talk to her about paying her rent late…. Every. Single. Month.  It seems that this tenant thinks that as long as she pays the late fees, she can pay whenever she chooses. Oh, how mistaken she is. Read the rest of this entry »

Well Kwikset, the maker of great lock sets, has done it again. Recently I had the opportunity to install a new lock set from them called the Key Control Deadbolt. This new lock is similar to another Kwikset SmartKey product I love and use currently in all my units.

The difference with this product is that it contains an extra hidden cylinder which can only be operated by a master key. This feature could certainly come in handy if some tenant were to take it upon himself to re-key one of the single-cylinder SmartKey locks and then move out without giving you a copy. Basically you would have to change the whole lock set as far as I know.

With the Key Control Deadbolt, you would be able to re-key it yourself without having the user’s key present. That, folks, is the better way to manage rental property keys.