In a world of smartphones with quick and easy buttons that provide immediate actions, the luxury housing market is now demanding homes that offer the latest technology. Buyers are looking for homes that have total home integration systems controlling the home’s temperature, lights, security, audio and visual experiences and even folding nano doors operated by one-touch electronic control panels.
From scheduling your lights to controlling your A/C from your smartphone, full home automation is both convenient and easy to use. Whether you’re sitting on your couch or thousands of miles away, with today’s app technology, you have constant access. Truly, any device in your home that uses electricity can be put on your home network and at your command.
Even a home’s exterior lighting has become integrated, and according to new data from Houzz, a leading consumer home improvement website, automated outdoor lighting is one of the hottest exterior technologies among homeowners today. Specifically, a quarter of outdoor upgraders are installing motion-sensitive lighting, while 11 percent are installing outdoor security systems, 8 percent are installing precipitation-sensitive irrigation and 2 percent are installing smartphone-connected plant sensors.
And while all of these gadgets, bells and whistles are critical to selling homes and providing the latest technology for buyers, it’s important that owners take precautions to protect their data and privacy. Smart homes must be "de-provisioned" by the seller and "re-provisioned" by the buyer, a process through which the prior owners transfer access of critical household systems to the property’s new owners, while simultaneously expunging their own (sensitive) data from those systems.
All smart home devices should then be re-registered with the new owners with updated contact information to make sure that firmware updates and other notifications go to the right individuals. Unsupported devices or features should be disabled whenever possible, and the new owners should review remote access settings on their devices to make sure that the previous owners or other outsiders aren’t able to get remote access to smart home infrastructure.
