As the pandemic wreaks havoc across the globe and people are compelled to stay in their homes, rental property managers and owners face a challenge unlike anything they’ve seen before. On top of financial strains and increases in maintenance issues (thanks to everyone being at home 24/7), managers now have to figure out how to tend to the needs of residents while ensuring the safety of on-site staff, third-party vendors, and the renters themselves.

In the short term, many property managers are only responding to emergency calls. While this might be fine for the time being, it won’t be sustainable for long. People likely will practice social distancing — however loosely — for the remainder of this year. And even when the coronavirus crisis eventually subsides, the ways we interact with each other will likely be quite different from before.

Property managers and owners face the difficult challenge of incorporating social distancing into best practices for the moment while planning for uncertain changes moving forward. It’s an incredibly daunting task, but smart home technology offers a way to make the process a little bit easier.

How Smart Home Devices Can Ease the Struggles of Social Distancing

While smart property technology (smart home technology done at scale for property managers) can’t single-handedly cure COVID-19 or revive the economy, it can help mitigate risk while you continue to take care of residents’ daily needs. If you control the temperature or humidity level of a building or complex, for instance, smart thermostats can support distancing efforts by making it a completely remote process.

Smart locks, meanwhile, can reduce the amount of physical contact required to enter a unit for maintenance or other necessary tasks. They remove the need to manage and touch physical keys or credentials while allowing work to happen when residents are out of the housing unit (since no one has to be home to let you in). If you add in a complete “curb to couch” keyless access solution, residents, guests, staff members, and vendors can move from the front intercom, through common areas, and into individual residences without ever needing to handle a key or a fob.

Smart doorbells, cameras in common areas, and connected intercoms can further reduce the possibility of exposure by allowing for remote interactions with vendors and delivery workers. With these tools, residents can know when packages have been delivered and retrieve them immediately.

If you’re considering adopting smart tech to help you safely manage your properties — pandemic or no pandemic — it’s important you choose devices that will best serve you and your residents. To make the right choice, you should ask yourself these questions:

1. Is the device reliable?

When you’re buying smart home devices in bulk, it’s easy to be swayed by a price tag. Smart technology can be expensive, and most property owners and managers want to save money — especially at a time like this. However, price isn’t the only factor you should consider. Connected devices require expertise not only with the hardware itself but also with firmware and software updates to ensure those devices function correctly.

If a company makes a low-ball offer, either on upfront costs or recurring fees, and has no clear history of success (or sustainable path forward), you should consider it a warning sign. You may just be committing to a larger cost down the line when those inferior products fail to function or go offline.

2. Is it secure?

In one survey, 82% of people in the U.S. said they worry about online security. It’s important to be mindful of this concern when installing a device with listening and video capabilities in someone’s home.

How does your smart device handle its data? What protections does it offer? Where does it store personally identifiable information? You should be able to answer these questions both for the sake of your residents as well as for your potential liability.

3. How easy is it to use and maintain?

A smart device is only as useful as its interface. If a device is difficult to use or constantly freezing and malfunctioning, the benefits of it quickly disappear.

Your on-site staff members shouldn’t have to become IoT technicians to get these things to work properly — nor should they have to enter someone’s home to teach a resident how to use it. Any technology you’re considering should be built for the needs of residential property management, including an intuitive interface and rock-solid infrastructure.

This pandemic has altered the way people interact, and apartment owners and managers will need to embrace new ways of keeping their residents, their staff members, and themselves safe. Smart home devices can help you do just that — not only for this crisis but also for what lies ahead.