These are the questions we hear on the hill, from landmark-house owners, from people who live by the ferry timetable and from offices near the courts. They are grouped by what they are really about.
Hillside houses and the historic district
Our house is in the St. George/New Brighton Historic District and we only want to change the lock, not the door — does that need a Landmarks permit?
Possibly not, but it is a question to put to the Landmarks Preservation Commission rather than to guess at. The LPC issues three kinds of approval. A Permit for Minor Work covers work that affects significant protected features without needing a Buildings permit, and door replacement is one of the examples it is used for. A Certificate of No Effect covers work that needs a Buildings permit but doesn't affect protected features. A Certificate of Appropriateness, with a public hearing, is for bigger changes such as new storeys or removing a stoop. City guidance says simple repairs are generally exempt, but it does not spell out door hardware, which is why we suggest asking the LPC, through 311 or its online portal, before anything visible changes.
What we can do is keep the change small enough that the answer is easy. An interior retrofit that fits over an existing single-cylinder deadbolt leaves the outside of the door exactly as it was — August's own guidance is that its retrofit locks work only with single-cylinder deadbolts. A replacement smart deadbolt that reuses the existing bore, in a finish close to the existing hardware, changes the outside a little. A new keypad in a new position, or a wired reader beside the door, changes it more. We can give you photographs of the door and the manufacturer's cut sheet for each option, which is what any LPC conversation will start from.
If the door itself has to be replaced — because it is too damaged to take a lock, for instance — that is clearly a permit matter, and the replacement has to suit the house. In that case we coordinate the lock with whoever is handling the door, so the new door arrives prepared for the lock you have chosen.
The back of our St. Marks Place house looks down on Carroll Place — does a keypad on the rear door need approval if people can see it from that street?
It may well do. The usual assumption is that landmark rules are about the front facade, but the LPC looks at what can be seen from public streets, and on this hillside the backs of houses on the north side of St. Marks Place face Carroll Place below. Commentary on the LPC process notes that work which is not on the front facade can still require a permit if it is visible from a side street, and that some interior work can need one because it can be seen from outside. A rear garden door that looks down on another street is exactly the kind of door where that applies.
That doesn't mean the rear door can't go keyless. It means the choice of hardware matters more. A lock with a slim, dark exterior that sits where the old deadbolt was is a smaller change than a large lit keypad in a new spot. A keypad on the inside face of a gate, or a reader set into an existing opening, may avoid a visible change to the house at all. We bring the options to the walkthrough, and if any of them changes the visible face of the house, the LPC question comes first.
There is a practical upside to being careful. A rear door that is visible from the street below is also a door that passers-by can see you using. A keypad positioned so the code can't be read from the lane, and a camera that covers the stair, help with privacy as well as with appearance.
Our house is a storey taller at the back than at the front — where should the hub go so locks on both levels stay connected?
Usually not in one place. Most lock bridges and hubs have to be fairly close to the lock they serve, and in a hillside house the front door and the lower rear door can be two floors and the depth of the house apart. One bridge in the middle often reaches neither door reliably. The common answer is one bridge or connection point per level, each plugged in near its own door, with the router's signal checked at both spots.
The type of lock changes the plan. A Bluetooth lock with a Wi-Fi bridge needs the bridge near the lock and good Wi-Fi at the bridge. A Wi-Fi lock needs good Wi-Fi at the door itself and uses batteries faster. A lock on Matter over Thread can relay through other mains-powered Thread devices, so a Thread-capable speaker, plug or border router on the lower floor can carry the signal down; Yale notes that its Matter locks need a Thread border router from the same ecosystem as the app you use. A Z-Wave lock reaches its hub through other powered Z-Wave devices on the way.
We test at both doors with a phone set to cellular data only, so we know the lock is reachable from outside the house, not just from the kitchen. If the lower floor is a dead spot for everything, a mesh point or wired access point down there is a better fix than a lock that only works when you are standing next to it, and it helps every other device on that floor too.
Commuter apartments and new waterfront rentals
We're about to sign a lease in one of the new buildings by the ferry terminal — what should we ask about the apartment door before signing?
Ask before you sign, because afterwards your choices are whatever the lease says. In a new building the developer usually chooses the entry system and the unit locks, and some buildings run unit doors on an app or credential tied to the building's own platform. Four questions cover most of it: what lock is on the unit door and who controls it; whether residents may add their own lock, and on what terms; whether you will have a physical key as well as any app or fob; and how guests, cleaners and dog walkers are let in.
The law gives you some baseline answers. In a building with three or more apartments, state law lets a tenant add their own lock to the apartment door, provided the owner gets a duplicate key on request, and lease clauses that charge for this are void. The city's Tenant Data Privacy Act also limits how owners of multiple dwellings may use smart access systems, including that a tenant can't be required to use one to get into their own apartment, and sets rules on what data is collected and kept. A building's own app may still be the most convenient way in; the point is to know what your alternatives are.
If the building allows residents to add a lock, we fit a second smart deadbolt or a retrofit that keeps an inside thumb-turn, doesn't interfere with the door's self-closer, and leaves the owner the key they're entitled to. If it doesn't, ask whether the building's own system can issue time-limited guest credentials, because that is often what new residents actually want from a smart lock.
Our sitter's code only works until 6 p.m. — if we're stuck on a late boat, can we stretch it from the terminal?
Usually, yes, as long as the lock is online. A scheduled code lives in the lock, but on a lock that is connected through Wi-Fi, a bridge or a hub, the schedule can be edited from the app wherever you are, and the change reaches the lock within moments. So if the 5:30 boat is missed, you can open the app on the Whitehall side or on the boat itself, extend the sitter's window to 8 p.m., and change it back tomorrow. On a Bluetooth-only lock with no bridge, the app has to be near the lock to make changes, so remote editing isn't possible.
Two habits make this easier. First, build some slack into recurring codes from the start — a window that ends an hour after you normally get home covers most delays without anyone touching the app. Second, give every person their own named code rather than one shared “helper” code, so stretching the sitter's time doesn't also stretch the cleaner's.
The same applies the other way. If you are home early and want a dog walker's code switched off for the afternoon, or a weekly cleaner's code paused while you travel, the app does it. At handover we show you where the schedule screens are and walk through extending and pausing a code, so the first time you need it isn't on a crowded boat.
Offices near Borough Hall and the courts
Our law office near the courthouse keeps client files on site — does a keypad with an access log help with our duty to protect client confidences?
It helps, as one part of a wider set of reasonable measures. New York's Rule of Professional Conduct 1.6(c) says a lawyer shall make reasonable efforts to prevent the inadvertent or unauthorised disclosure or use of, or unauthorised access to, protected client information. Ethics guidance on that rule has mostly focused on digital information, but paper files in an office are covered by the same duty, and who can walk into the room where they are kept is part of reasonable efforts. This is a description of the rule, not legal advice; your own ethics counsel decides what is reasonable for your practice.
In practice, offices near the civic centre usually do best with two controlled doors rather than one. The street or suite door lets staff and expected visitors in. The file room, or the corridor behind reception, has its own lock with a code for each person who needs it and no one else — not the cleaning contractor, not the building staff, not a visiting client. Each code is named, so the log shows which person opened the file room and when, and a departing employee's code is deleted the day they leave.
The log is only useful if someone looks at it, so we set up alerts for openings outside office hours and show the office manager how to export the history. A keypad lever on an interior door is often enough for a small practice; where there are several rooms or more than a handful of staff, a small access control system gives one log across every door. Either way, the inside of each door still opens freely for anyone leaving.
Living with the lock day to day
Can the keypad be shut off at night while we're home, so no code works from outside?
On many locks, yes. Manufacturers give the feature different names. On the Google Nest × Yale lock it is called Privacy Mode, which disables the keypad so the lock can't be opened with a passcode, and it can be turned on from the app or by holding a button on the lock; turning the inside thumb-turn to unlock turns it off again. Schlage's keypad locks have a Vacation Mode, set with the lock's six-digit programming code, during which user codes won't open the lock. Google is careful to say its Privacy Mode doesn't add an extra layer of security; it simply stops codes working for a while.
It is useful for a household that hands codes to several outside people — a walker, a cleaner, a relative — and wants none of them usable overnight or while the family is away. It is also a sensible setting on a lower garden door that nobody uses after dark. The trade-off is that anyone without app access is locked out while it's on, so a teenager coming home late needs the app or a key, not a code.
If a lock you are considering doesn't have this feature, schedules can do a similar job: each outside code set to work only in daytime hours. We set whichever approach suits the lock at handover and show you how to switch it on and off.
Will the lock's history show whether the door was opened from inside or by someone coming in?
Often, but not always in the same words. Many smart locks record how each lock or unlock happened, not only when. Depending on the brand, the history may list an unlock by a named code, by the app, by a fingerprint, by a key, or manually from the inside thumb-turn; owners of August locks connected to SmartThings, for example, have reported the unlock method coming through as entries such as “Unlocked with keypad”. Auto-lock events are usually shown separately.
Reading it takes a little practice. A manual unlock from inside usually means someone already in the house opened the door, which is the normal way out. A keypad unlock with a named code tells you who came in. An unlock with no name attached may be a key, a shared code, or a lock that hasn't been set to label its events, so we name every code and check how the chosen lock reports each method before we leave.
What the history can't tell you is whether the person who opened the door was the person the code belonged to. Codes get shared. That is why we give each person their own code and suggest a doorbell camera at the arrival door, so a log entry and a face can be matched when it matters.
My partner has an iPhone and I have an Android phone — can we both manage the same lock?
Yes, in two different ways. The simplest is the lock maker's own app, which most brands offer on both iPhone and Android; one person creates the account and invites the other as a second owner or administrator. That works regardless of which phones you have, and it is how most mixed households run a lock.
If you want the lock inside your smart-home apps as well, Matter is designed for this. Google describes Matter's Multi-Admin feature as letting a Matter-enabled device be used in different Matter-certified apps at the same time, so a Matter lock can sit in both Apple Home and Google Home. Each app needs its own compatible hub, and Google notes that only one platform actively controls the device at any given moment, though status changes show up in both. On a Thread lock, the hub on each side also acts as the border router.
Before buying, check that the lock supports what you want: some models work with Apple Home, some with Google, some with both through Matter, and some only through their own app. We confirm compatibility with both your phones and your existing hubs at the walkthrough, and set up the second administrator before we leave.
