Has anyone tried to document your difficult to impossible for others to understand “Smart Home” system so that others can use, maintain, and repair the system in your absence? If so, how did you attack this problem?
I’m contemplating a sale in the next year or two and I thought I’d prepare a manual for first, my wife, and in the future, a potential buyer. I started to prepare an outline of the task and quit within a half hour after realizing how many little pieces of information are necessary to allow another non-technical person to take my place.
As far as I’m concerned, in the short term my wife had better take good care of me and in the future “let the buyer beware”. Listing a home as a “Smart Home” is a negative or neutral, certainly not a positive.
I have often thought about this but have never taken action.
The smart switches, smart outlets and possibly thermostats are the things that I would be most concerned about. Mostly because I wouldn’t want to replaced those. The thermostats probably aren’t much of a concern. I would probably replace them with regular thermostats.
I would remove everything else.
In which case, I would provide the realtor or buyer depending how you approach the sale, with the maker and model of those devices so they know which apps to use and how to factory reset.
But at the end of the day, those above items can be used without being setup to an app.
The only way I would see a home being identified as a “smart home” during sell is if it was a single platform fully integrated system. But that’s a guess. I’d be interested in the thoughts of any of our members that are in real-estate or of the like. @Bam ?
“ How Smart Home Technology Can Be a Selling Point”
“ Moving? Here’s what to do whether you plan to take or leave your smart-home devices.‘
Check out the most tricked-out smart home video on this link
I Am a bit late to the party but my brother @R.Good has tagged me in. (thank you sir)
so I became a licensed realtor as a side gig because I wanted to do better than the realtor I had experience with when I bought my current home. I can say that I have actually thought about this quite a bit but surprisingly not run into it very much at all.
I think one of the things that throws our community here into a distorted view is that we have all taken the time to join a community and as such more than likely have more invested in a smart home that the average person overall. most people here aren’t single or double cam users, we have jumped all the way into the pool!
in speaking with other realtors and professionals the majority of people have a couple of cams, maybe a switch, definitely some bulbs, but for the most part the system could be taken down in an hour or two if someone was selling and moving. in 2023 ( some to be 24) im surprised at how many people haven’t switched the majority of their switches to smart switches ( or other hard wired devices like the FLP) and such. The common person in society just doesn’t have that much and what they do have is pretty darn easily removable.
i’ve only run into a few homes during showings that even have switches or plugs. cameras here and there but really not many.
so saying all of that to say this, if you were looking to sell and you have “jumped in to the pool” of a smart home Ecosystem, depending on how much you have invested it could very well be worth your time to put all your original fixtures back in the home. I don’t know about you but I have saved all of my stuff that I’ve replaced to date such as switches. But you have to definitely consider your target audience of who is looking to buy your home.
If you have an older couple looking at your home that aren’t tech savvy and will be bringing a rotary phone ( just kidding on that part) and would have trouble, having a smart home ecosystem as part of the home sale could almost be a detriment to the sale and transfer. I could definitely see their realtor telling them to add in a contingency that all the smart home equipment has to be switched out for traditional to the cost of the seller. ( i know I would for clients)
Whereas if you have a young buyer or buyers interested, it could very well be a good selling point and at that point you could write in a clause to the selling agreement that upon acceptance you would reset all devices where applicable and provide them with instructions on how to set up an account and set up devices along with links to the manufacturers pages of those devices.
The big part, and I would argue it’s the biggest part, who is looking to buy the home and what do they want included. But any good realtor that you would be working with would ask about such things when they do a walk through with you and would ask for disclosure on any appliances or fixtures that come with the home.
I home that give a bit of insight, if you have any questions I would be glad to give a shot at answering it.
Keep a [secured/encrypted] Excel sheet with an overall network topology updated. When you add a product, jot down location, purpose, model, MAC address, color, dependencies, user IDs, passwords, etc. Log all CAT wiring runs and make sure it is properly identified in both ends. Keep it off line if concerned over security.
In my case I also update the Eero app accordingly so there is no debate of what device that is connecting where and how. Other routers likely have similar features.
And I have a brief description hanging by my networking gear how to power cycle and in what order to turn on equipment (not that really ever has been needed, but why not).
All I can say is, WOW !!!