Could the ability to flip the lights on from the comfort of your tablet move your home in a competitive seller’s market?
Many Americans are keen to own or invest in smart home technology, particularly if it will help sell their homes faster, according to a recent survey by Coldwell Banker.
Harris Poll conducted the online Smart Home Marketplace Survey in October on Coldwell Banker’s behalf. Of the more than 4,000 adults surveyed, about 1,000 reported owning at least one smart home product.
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The most popular types of smart tech among participants were entertainment products like smart TVs and speaker systems as well as security and temperature-controlling programs.
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Of respondents who said they currently have smart home products, 57 percent were male and 43 percent were female. Forty-four percent reported being parents with children under 18 years of age.
A trend that spans generations
Coldwell Banker concluded that this technology is becoming more mainstream and is not limited to the young and affluent.
Surprisingly, older generations are adopting certain products faster than younger ones (40 percent of those 65 and older own smart temperature products, compared to only 25 percent of millennials). And about half of smart home technology users have household incomes between $50,000 and $100,000.
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Smart home technology also shows signs of having an addictive quality, as 70 percent of people who own it said purchasing their first product made them more likely to buy another one. One product is definitely not enough to consider your home “smart”– 60 percent of those surveyed said a home should have at least three different categories of products to be worthy of the title.
If buyers want it, sellers would invest
Just over half of respondents who have been slower to adopt smart home technology said they would purchase or install such products if they were selling their home to expedite the process. Of those homeowners, 65 percent said they would be willing to spend $1,500 or more on smart home products to make that happen.
Coldwell Banker Real Estate co-sponsored the Smart Home Marketplace at CES 2016, held last week in Las Vegas — the first time a real estate company has sponsored the marketplace.
“Close to 5 million existing homes were sold in the United States in 2014, which represents a huge white space for smart home manufacturers,” said Sean Blankenship, the company’s chief marketing officer. “We are aiming to be the conduit between these manufacturers and homebuyers and sellers, and conducting this research was one of the first of many steps toward achieving this goal.”
