| Be proactive:
The best way to solve this is to set a plan ahead of time.
Have your housekeeper on call for lost key issues, but set up fees and protocol ahead of time.
- Will your housekeeper want your renters to call the them directly? Or should they call you first?
- Put a sticker inside the lock box with your contact numbers on it.
- Be sure the fees associated with lost keys are on your rental rules.
Distribute your keys to every trustworthy person in the area.
- Other owners, association managers, maybe even the real estate agent who sold you the property.
Have a second lockbox with a different code or hide-a-key somewhere.
After my first incident when my guests got locked out, I got very inventive:
It was Fourth of July weekend. My cell phone rang and it was my housekeeper in Florida. She had an accident and was in the hospital (thankfully not badly injured). She was not going to be able to clean my condo. And, of course, I had guests due to arrive in just a few hours. I called the back-up housekeeper and she just happened to be at the unit downstairs. No problem, she'll clean my place too. I hung up and thought, good. Solved. About an hour later my back-up housekeeper called to tell me that her key does not fit my door. Blood pressure shot through the ceiling! I forgot to give her a key the last time I re-keyed the locks. But again, I had a solution. “No problem, here's my lock box code,” I said, the keys are inside. She called back 2 minutes later. “Christine, I got the lock box open and there are no keys inside.” My blood pressure by that point must have been off the chart. My renters either forgot to put the keys inside the lock box or they left them in the unit. Now what? I thought and thought, then…an Epiphany! I told her to go upstairs to another owner's unit. I gave her their lock box code. I told her to go inside their unit and go to the utility closet. Feel the backside of the hot water tank (I'm sure she thought I was nuts!). Taped to the backside of the hot water tank, you will find a key! That one I did remember indeed to replace when I last changed the locks. The back-up housekeeper got in and was able to clean my unit before the next guest arrived. Disaster averted.
© Christine Karpinski 2006
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