How does this work when the owner, not the manager, holds the building relationship?

The building only needs to program a phone number for the unit, and it does not matter whether the owner or the manager requests it. Managers typically have the owner make the one-line ask to the building, and from then on all access administration happens in the manager's account without involving the owner again.

Can entry stay working when a property changes managers or leaves the program?

Yes, cleanly. Off-boarding a property means the building points that unit's entry back at the owner's number, one directory change. Nothing was installed, so there is no equipment to recover and no shared codes to chase down.

How do guests get instructions for the building door versus the unit door?

Keep them as two steps in the check-in message: first the building entrance (their passcode at the panel, or that entry is automatic), then the unit door (lock code or lockbox). Most stuck-in-the-lobby messages come from instructions that only covered the second door.

Blog / Automate VRBO Guest Check-In Across Multiple Listings

Automate VRBO Guest Check-In Across Multiple Listings

By Ty · 2026-07-06

Professional VRBO managers inherit whatever each property came with, and when the property is a unit inside an apartment or condo building, it comes with a buzzer. Multiply that across a portfolio and the front doors become an operations problem nobody priced in: guests dialing units at midnight, cleaners stuck outside on turnover day, owners asking why their guest’s check-in stalled in the lobby, and every building’s panel dialing a different phone number that may or may not belong to anyone on your team.

Vacation-rental software handles the bookings, the pricing, and often the unit locks. The building entrance is the layer it does not touch.

How to fix it

Option	Pros	Cons
Owner’s number stays on the buzzer	No changes	Owners field guest calls, defeats the point of hiring a manager
Staff phone per building	A person your team controls	One phone per building does not scale, missed calls strand guests
Lockboxes at entrances	Guests self-serve	Condo boards commonly ban them, useless for recurring vendor visits
Smart lock platforms (RemoteLock, others)	Great for unit doors	The building entrance is out of their reach
Lowkey	Auto buzz-in, per-stay passcodes, vendor schedules, entry history per property	Quick one-time setup with your building

A manager’s version of the question is contractual as much as technical: entry needs to work without the owner in the loop, survive staff changes, and produce a record when an owner asks what happened. That points away from personal phones and physical workarounds, and toward access that lives in an account your team operates.

Where Lowkey helps

Lowkey gives a vacation-rental management company one account for building entry across every property. Each unit’s buzzer dials its own virtual number, guests get passcodes or auto buzz-in windows matched to their stay dates, cleaners and maintenance get recurring access that expires on its own, and your whole team works from their own phones. The per-property activity history answers owner questions with a log instead of a guess. It works with any buzzer that dials out to a phone number, which covers most apartment and condo buildings, and onboarding a new property is a directory change, not an installation.