Previous Story
Smart Homes: Why They’re an Investment to Watch in 2017
With smart devices proliferating through all areas of life and increasing in quality and sophistication while correspondingly decreasing in price, the time is ripe to set up your own smart home. Both Amazon and Google now offer voice activated devices, which can act as a central hub, allowing the user to do anything from turning lights on and off and adjusting thermostats to ordering household items directly to their door. With smart homes becoming more common, and the technologies that power them becoming more ubiquitous, smart homes are an investment to watch. Here are some of their most exciting and enticing applications.
They’re More Affordable Than Ever
Whether you’re purchasing an existing smart home or converting your current one, it is cheaper than ever to get set up in a smart home. Whether you’re simply looking for a more integrated and technology focused lifestyle, or converting a property to put on the market, the value of a smart home has never been greater. More and more people are refinancing their homes and taking out mortgages to fund the conversions to smart technology.
Using New Jersey as an example, refi rates in NJ are at 3.11% for a 15 year fixed mortgage and have shown a steady decrease in the last few weeks. Property developers should realize that the market is currently at that golden stage where the technology is affordable enough to be purchased and installed by anyone, but still niche enough that a pre-set smart home can command a particularly high price on the market making recouping your investment easier. And for those not looking to sell, remember that some smart devices could actually save you money.
They Can Do More Than Ever
With the major tech players Apple, Samsung, Google and Amazon, all offering their own smart technology platforms, and with an increasing number of hardware manufacturers producing products that are compatible with more than one of these services, the capabilities of smart technology are constantly growing and are rapidly moving beyond being mere gimmicks. As these capabilities continue to increase, smart homes will eventually be able to assist elderly and disabled people with tasks that many of us take for granted and will allow more people to live independently. Advanced motion sensing capabilities will open up the possibilities for cheap home security systems for all. Such a system can currently cost hundreds of dollars, while any smart home devices you already own can be repurposed and costs significantly reduced.
You Can Spread the Investment Over Time
As with decorating a regular old house, the only limit is your budget. If you want to dive in at the deep end and put together a smart home system that is the envy of all your friends and colleagues, it could cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars. For a more basic system, it could be tens of thousands. However, you can just as easily add features slowly, piece by piece, to your home and spend no more than a few hundred dollars at a time. As with all technology you will get what you pay for and so it is important to strike a balance. Don’t rush into buying cheap hardware that will fail you before you’ve had a chance to enjoy it, but also try and prioritize your purchases and start by adding things that will be of genuine use to you. That LED system you can control from your smartphone will let you set whatever kind of ambient lighting you desire, but probably isn’t as useful as being able to turn on a light switch in the dark or automatically replenish your essentials.
They Can Improve Your Safety and Wellbeing
In addition to the potential security applications, smart homes also offer other capabilities that keep you safe and secure. Carbon monoxide and smoke detectors that offer you more information than a simple alarm mean you can be alerted about danger even sooner in situations where seconds and minutes really make a difference. You can also turn appliances off at the mains from an app on your phone as long as you have a Wi-Fi or mobile network connection, saving you money as well as potential property damage from overheating appliances. If you have young children, you may be interested in some of the offerings available that are designed to be placed in a nursery or child’s bedroom, although be sure to investigate beforehand and be certain that any such devices are secure.
So, whether you’re making an investment in a more comfortable lifestyle or looking to make a property profitable, smart homes are definitely an investment to consider over the coming year.
