Can I give my pet sitter access only for the dates I'm away?

Yes, and you should. A scheduled access window can be set to your exact travel dates and close itself when you land back home. If you instead give out a permanent building code, it keeps working after the trip, so rotate or remove it once you are back. The goal is access that matches the trip, not access that lingers.

What if I'm in a different time zone and can't answer the buzzer?

That is exactly why a method that needs you live, like answering the call or a Google Voice forward, falls apart on vacation. If the sitter visits at 8 AM your building's time and you are asleep eleven time zones away, no one buzzes them in. Pick something that works without you in the moment: a code at the panel, a lockbox, or a scheduled auto-buzz.

Is it safe to give a pet sitter a building code or key while I'm gone?

Reasonably, especially with a bonded and insured sitter from a service like Rover. The bigger risk is access that never expires. Prefer a code or schedule you can close after the trip, never reuse your building's main entry code, and choose an option that notifies you when someone is let in so you have a record of each visit.

Blog / How to Let a Pet Sitter Into Your Apartment While You're on Vacation

How to Let a Pet Sitter Into Your Apartment While You're on Vacation

By Ty · 2026-05-11

You are finally on the trip, and your cat still needs feeding twice a day. The sitter you hired is now standing at your building’s front door, but the lobby is gated by a buzzer that dials your phone, and you are on a beach six time zones away with your phone on airplane mode. The whole reason you paid for a sitter, knowing your pet is taken care of, falls apart at the one door they cannot get through.

The barrier is the building’s front entrance, not your apartment door, and the hard part is that you are not around to answer for the entire trip. So the fix has to work without you in the moment.

How to fix it

The sitter will come and go multiple times a day for days, while you are unreachable. Weigh each option on whether it works with zero involvement from you during the trip.

Option	Pros	Cons
Permanent code on the building panel	Free, works for the whole trip	Never expires, so you must change or remove it once you are back
Key in a lockbox at the entrance	Sitter gets in anytime, no phone needed	Many buildings ban exterior lockboxes, and the code can be shared or copied
Smart lock on your apartment door	Issue a temporary code just for the trip	Does not open the building’s front door, and usually needs install and landlord approval
Answer the buzzer live, or via Google Voice	Free	Impossible from another time zone, asleep, or with your phone off, which is most of a vacation
Lowkey	Recurring access for your exact travel dates, hands-free, auto-expires when you’re back	Quick one-time setup with your building

If you reuse one trusted sitter often, a permanent building code is the simplest starting point, as long as you remember to rotate it after the trip. If you want access that matches the dates you are gone and closes itself, scheduled auto-buzz is the cleaner fit. For a one-off walk while you are at work rather than a full trip, the same logic applies to letting a dog walker into your apartment.

Where Lowkey helps

When you are away and cannot answer the buzzer for days on end, Lowkey is built for exactly this. It is software that forwards your building’s buzzer call to your phone and can auto-buzz your sitter into the building on a recurring schedule, say every day from 8 to 10 AM and 6 to 8 PM for the dates of your trip, after which access expires on its own. The sitter dials your unit, gets let in automatically, and comes up to your apartment door to feed the cat or walk the dog, all without you doing anything from the airport lounge. You give your building a virtual number to program for your unit, hand the sitter a 4-digit passcode for the panel, share access with a partner or backup sitter, and get a push notification each time someone is let in, so you can see the morning visit happened from anywhere in the world. There is nothing to install, and it works with any buzzer that dials out to a phone number, which covers most apartment and condo systems.