Smart Home Tips for Rehabbers and House Flippers

My parents sold their home a few weeks ago. It sold for more than our realtor expected and a lot faster than she thought it would. My parents and I weren’t surprised. Our theory was, it would sell fast because it’s a Smart Home, I think our theory was correct. In their home, they have a Savant control system, whole house audio, automated shades, a smart lighting system and a theater in the basement. The house isn’t new, we lived in it for 20+ years but smart home upgrades are said to make homes more move in ready which helps them sell faster and for more money.

Last week, I went to a marketing conference and my friend Mark said to me “flippers are probably great people for you to work with”. I never thought of that. I always thought our best client were one of the five people/situations I mentioned in our old blog post . I think Mark is right, people who buy, remodel and sell homes are great people to speak with as well. I went to BiggerPockets.com to see more about how house flippers are thinking about Smart Home Automation. When I saw the post “The Smart Home – R We Really That Outdated?” I realized Mark was onto something, we can help house flippers future proof their renovations which will help them sell faster and make more money.

Imagine for a second, you are selling a home. You client wants a home that is in the right neighborhood and looks the way they want but after that, long-term finances come into play. They think how much will they need to invest to personalize it? How much will it cost in terms of upkeep? How will it hold heat during the winter? There are tons of questions to think about when buying a home and in many cases lead people to question their move-in readiness. Building a new home or gutting and remodeling an old home into a Smart home allows you to avoid some of the questions of moving into an old home because it feels newer. 

Future-proofing a home is not easy. Most people simply are not aware of what it takes to do it, let’s face it, technology is evolving fast! Think about it, blackouts use to suck because you couldn’t turn on your TV, now they suck because you can’t use WiFi or charge your cell phone. This is the beginning of an era where your house can have problems that have nothing to do with the structure and everything to with the technology within it. Buyers are now beginning to think about that when they buy homes. 

Building with the future in mind is what separates builders from their competition. Think about it, years ago it didn’t matter if a house had a dishwasher but if you went to a home today that would be weird. Now, there are other factors that matter as well and many of them are not obvious when building a new home. Below are four areas I would focus on when building a new home to ensure it is ready for the future:

1. Installing Fiber Optics instead of Coax or Cat5/6

Historically installing Coax cables or CAT5/6 has been the best way to wire a home for all of its internet or cable needs but the world is changing. As the world continues to move forward with our reliance on data, the speed of our wires needs to get greater and greater. In the mid 90’s when AOL first began, 56 Kbps internet speed was acceptable, people were happy to simply be on the worldwide web. If you force someone to use dial-up Internet today they may strangle you. The same will be said for using CAT5/6 in the future. The internet is getting faster, my home has 150 Mbps internet speed but companies like Google are now offering internet speeds as fast at 1 Gbps. Soon that will be the expected.

TV’s are also beginning to require more speed than CAT5/6 cables are capable of enabling. When TV first began, they were black and white then standard definition (SD), now most people won’t even watch it if it’s not high definition (HD) and 4K televisions are next in line. 4K TV’s have four times more pixels than a HD TV which means TV’s are going to look even better. This also means that as 4K or even 8K comes Cat5/Cat6 will not be the correct wires for your home and without fiber optics true 4K content can’t be delivered.

To make a long story short, these are great selling features. If you’re not running fiber throughout your home for video and internet people will have to upgrade soon so this is a great way to separate your house from the competition.

2. Installing Smart Thermostats

I wrote a bit about this in last week’s blog post but it’s worth reiterating, Smart Thermostats are a good investment. According to Nest, the smart thermostat acquired by Google in 2014, customers have an “estimated average savings of $131 to $145 a year, which means the Nest Thermostat will pay for itself in under two years” so year three to 30 (length for a typical mortgage) your thermostat is saving you money. This use case has been so compelling that some states are making smart thermostats mandatory for all new homes.

3. Using LED Lights and/or a Smart Lighting System

Another feature I mentioned in last week’s post but I believe needs to be stated again. LED lights should be in all new homes! These lights last about 40 times longer than normal incandescent lights and use as much as 6 times less energy over that time. That’s huge. Lighting use about 30% of the energy in the average home so over time this change can make a significant impact on your energy bill. Combining this with a lighting control system like Vantage, Lutron or Savant is also great because it gives you the ability to set scenes within your home to make events like movie night and going to bed easier (one button to turn everything off) but also makes going away safer (smart lighting to make it look like you’re home). All of this is money you're helping buyers save is another feature that can put your home above the rest.

4. Installing speakers throughout the home*

This feature depends on who you are as a person but for me is super important. I would only do this in high-end projects but again it will help separate you from competitive builders Also, Installing in-wall or in-ceiling speakers are best if done during the building of your home. If done then, it’s easier because the walls are open which also makes it less expensive to run the wires. We do a lot of work where we have to cut people’s walls open to install speakers because their builder didn’t ask this question. There’s an asterisk by this because I wouldn’t consider this a new feature but with the advent of systems like Sonos and other music servers the ability to play all of your music, Spotify, and other music sources through these speakers has increased demand significantly.

What’s happening right now with technology is very important for how you build your homes because it is going to have a huge impact going forward. Every home is going to have these features it's just a matter of do you want to lead the pack or be behind. I work with a builder in our area that is now doing this in all of his projects because he lost this part of a custom home to us earlier this year. He saw there's a desire for this and he capitalized on the rising tide, will you?