This article is presented by Allegion.
Most investors think the hard part of real estate investing is finding deals—running the numbers, negotiating the price, getting financing. And yes, that’s the fun part. But if you’ve ever been woken up at 11 p.m. because a tenant is locked out, or lost half a Saturday driving across town to let a contractor into a unit, you know the truth: The real bottleneck isn’t acquisitions. It’s operations.
Managing access across your doors, tenants, and teams sounds simple when you have one or two properties. A spare key here, a lockbox there—it works fine. But once you start stacking doors—three, five, 10, 20—that “system” falls apart. Suddenly, you’re not scaling a portfolio; you’re babysitting it.
We’re going to talk about the hidden drag that keeps small and midsize landlords stuck. Specifically, why decentralized access control (keys, lockboxes, and the old-school way of “just driving over”) becomes your biggest time waster—and how investors who want to scale beyond the mom-and-pop stage need to rethink how they handle something as basic as getting in the front door.
The Early Stage: Why Access Isn’t a Big Deal at First
When you’re just getting started, managing access feels like the least of your worries. You have one property, maybe two. If a tenant calls, you grab your spare key and drive over. Need to let in a plumber? Toss a lockbox on the porch and text them the code. It’s not elegant, but it works.
At this stage, “low tech” can almost feel like a badge of honor. You’re scrappy, you’re hustling, and you’re proving to yourself that you can handle being a landlord. Keys get tossed in a drawer, lockbox codes get shared, and you don’t think twice about it.
The problem is that what feels efficient for one or two units doesn’t scale. That same system that saves you time in the beginning quickly becomes the thing that eats up your time as you add doors.
One lockbox turns into 10. Spare keys multiply into a pile that only you can decipher. Before long, you’re the only person who knows how to actually get into half your units, which means you’re chained to the day-to-day in ways you didn’t plan for.
Scaling a portfolio isn’t about whether you can handle a couple of properties this way. It’s about whether you should. Because once you hit three, five, or 10 units, what used to be “no big deal” turns into a system that breaks under its own weight.
The Growing Pains of Three to 50 Units
Once you get past a couple of doors, the cracks in your system start to show. With three, five, or even 50 units spread across different neighborhoods, access control becomes one of the biggest hidden drags on your time.
Lost keys suddenly become a weekly headache. Every lost key means either driving across town with a spare, paying a locksmith, or rekeying locks altogether. Contractor lockboxes seem like an easy solution at first, until codes get shared with half the neighborhood, and you lose track of who has been in and out of your property. Property managers or VAs spend hours juggling multiple sets of keys and tracking who has them last.
Meanwhile, tenants get locked out, vendors get frustrated waiting around, and you’re fielding calls that eat up your mental bandwidth. Each showing, turnover, or maintenance visit now comes with a layer of logistics that slows down the process. Instead of focusing on acquisitions or growing your portfolio, you’re stuck babysitting doors.
This is the point where many investors feel like they’ve hit a wall. They are finding deals, they have the capital, but the day-to-day inefficiencies of managing scattered sites grind everything to a halt.
The truth is, it’s not the market or the deal flow holding them back. It’s the lack of a system to control access at scale.
The Real Cost of Operational Bottlenecks
Operational drag doesn’t just cost you a little time here and there. It compounds, and the true costs are bigger than most landlords realize:
- Time lost: Missed maintenance windows, rescheduled contractors, and wasted drives add up fast. Every hour you spend coordinating access is an hour not spent on acquisitions, strategy, or scaling your business.
- Money lost: Vacancies stretch longer when contractors can’t get in on time. Rekeying costs pile up when keys go missing. Even small inefficiencies—like paying a contractor to stand around waiting—chip away at your cash flow.
- Reputation lost: Tenants don’t care that you had to chase down a missing key. They just see that their repair took longer than it should. Vendors get annoyed when access is sloppy. Property managers lose patience when systems are disorganized. Over time, this hurts retention, referrals, and the relationships you need to grow.
When you add it all up, the bottleneck is clear: It’s not that investors can’t find deals. They can’t efficiently run the ones they already own. And until you solve that, scale will always stall.
From Mom-and-Pop to Pro: What Systems Do Differently
Small landlords often think access is just part of the grind. You carry the keys, you deal with lockouts, you text contractors the lockbox code. But professional operators see it differently. They know access isn’t a chore—it’s infrastructure.
The difference shows up in the systems. Mom-and-pop landlords rely on keychains, spreadsheets, and a lot of personal involvement. Pro operators build centralized, trackable processes that anyone on their team can use. Instead of the owner being the only person who knows how to get into a unit, there’s a system in place that makes access seamless, secure, and scalable.
Think about it this way: When you buy more properties, you don’t buy more clipboards and filing cabinets. You build digital systems for bookkeeping, tenant screening, and leasing. Access control is no different. Treat it like a core part of operations, and suddenly your portfolio stops running you—and starts running itself.
Smarter Access = Scalable Operations
The solution to the access bottleneck isn’t more keys or more lockboxes. It’s smarter access control.
Smart locks like the Schlage XE360 Series and credentialing take the guesswork out of managing multiple properties. Instead of driving across town to meet a contractor, you grant them access remotely. Instead of rekeying every time a tenant moves out, you issue or revoke mobile credentials with a click. And instead of wondering who was in your unit last, you have an activity log that shows exactly when the door was opened, and by whom.
This shift is what allows landlords to scale. You’re no longer the only person who can unlock the front door. Vendors, property managers, and even tenants can be managed centrally, securely, and without the time drain of old-school systems.
This is where Schlage mobile-enabled smart locks come into play. They’re designed with enterprise-level reliability, but flexible enough for investors scaling from a handful of units to dozens. With smart credentialing and remote access, Schlage solutions eliminate the friction that keeps small portfolios stuck in mom-and-pop mode. Schlage has been around for over a 100 years and is trusted in over 40 million homes, schools and businesses around the world, which means you’re not just buying convenience—you’re building a foundation that can support your portfolio as it grows.
Scaling isn’t about doing more. It’s about removing the friction that slows you down. And for most landlords, access is one of the biggest frictions they don’t even realize they have.
How to Start Transitioning Your Portfolio
Shifting from keys and lockboxes to electronic access control doesn’t have to happen overnight. The key is to start where it hurts the most.
Begin with an audit. Look at your current system: How many sets of keys are floating around? How many times have you paid for rekeying in the past year? How often do contractors or tenants call because they can’t get in? Those pain points show you where to begin.
Next, pick your high-turnover or high-traffic units as your test case. Maybe it’s a short-term rental that has guests in and out weekly, or a property where contractors are on site frequently. Upgrading one or two doors will give you a feel for how much time and hassle you save.
From there, build a repeatable process. Create a system for how access is granted, revoked, and logged. Document it so that anyone on your team—or even a future property manager—can follow it.
The goal isn’t to flip a switch on all your properties tomorrow. It’s to start layering in smarter systems as your portfolio grows, so you never hit that wall where your operations can’t keep up with your acquisitions.
Solve the Bottleneck Before It Stops Your Growth
Every investor loves the thrill of closing on a new deal. But the truth is, acquisitions don’t stall portfolios—operations do. If you can’t manage what you already own, adding more doors just adds more headaches.
Access may seem like a small detail, but it’s often the hidden bottleneck that keeps investors stuck. Lost keys, lockouts, frustrated vendors, and wasted hours all pile up until your growth slows to a crawl.
The good news is that this is a solvable problem. By treating access as infrastructure, not an afterthought, you free yourself to focus on what actually builds wealth: finding and acquiring more deals. Solutions like Schlage’s smart locks and Zentra’s access control software make it possible for multifamily property owners to operate with the same efficiency as enterprise property management companies. And that’s what separates babysitters from builders.
If you’re serious about scaling your portfolio, start by fixing the bottlenecks in your operations. The front door is a good place to begin.
