The Safety Benefit of Smart Homes

Sure, smart-home devices can make a property more desirable, but have you considered how they can keep you safe as a listing agent or when showing homes to buyers? Open houses and vacant properties are the top places where real estate professionals report encountering threatening situations, according to the National Association of REALTORS®’ 2016 Member Safety Report. Tara Christianson, technology and training director at Century 21 Redwood Realty in Arlington, Va., recently hosted a webinar and offered tips on how smart devices can protect your client’s property and yourself.

• Smart door locks and keyless entry systems can help keep a vacant property more secure. Products such as Schlage’s Bluetooth-enabled locks not only allow you to control access to the property but also can record traffic in the home. You can create e-keys for contractors, assistants, and your real estate team members.
• Video doorbells, such as SkyBell, contain video cameras so you can talk to whoever is on the other side of the door without even being on the premises. The video streams to your phone, and some products even allow you to take a photo of the person at the door to send to authorities if you become alarmed.
• Motion sensors are helpful for both vacant homes and new construction — both properties squatters tend to target. Fibaro, for example, sends activity alerts to your phone when there is movement in the home. You can set alerts to the times you expect the home to be empty. “Maybe someone’s in the home that you need to be aware of so you know to bring someone with you when you arrive,” Christianson says.
• Use devices that monitor doors and windows so you can tell when they’ve been left open. This will likewise alert you to suspicious activity at a listing, and these devices are useful for sellers as well so they can monitor their homes on days when they’re being shown.
• Smart lighting and entertainment systems don’t just help you set the ambiance for a showing. Systems like Hue and Lifx allow you to set on and off times for lighting systems, making it look like a listing is continually occupied.

Do Smart Homes Invite Threats?

Such technology can make a home more vulnerable to hackers, Christianson admits, but there are steps you can take to mitigate the risk. You should never use open Wi-Fi networks when operating smart devices. If your client’s network is less secure, you can protect your own device with a virtual private network, which creates an encrypted connection when using your client’s Wi-Fi. But if you’re going to use a device in a seller’s home, you should always ask them how protected their network is. Do they have a password that’s hard to guess, or are they using a simple code like “123” or “password”?

Give Clients Smart Advice

Steer clients interested in smart devices toward well-known vendors such as Nest, which is backed by Google. “Sometimes, products or companies sound great, but then the vendor stops updating their devices or shuts down without notice,” Christianson says. “You don’t want your client to be stuck with something that suddenly stops working.”

Tell your sellers to disclose what smart devices they have in their homes to buyers up front. That will absolve them of any responsibility in case a buyer has a complaint about being monitored during a showing. “You don’t want conversations with buyers caught on tape without their knowledge,” Christianson says. Let informed buyers make their own decisions about whether they want to even enter rooms that have active recording devices.