The glossy advert pimps the house as ‘smart’. You have a vision that it ticks all of your boxes – remote-this, auto-that … you start dreaming of life in this house.
Snap out of it, how smart is ’smart’? You just don’t know until you visit the house, but the challenge is even at the inspection would you be able to tell? There is a bit of guesswork here, perhaps too much for many people:
* If you can see the ‘smart solution’ then the integration may have been an afterthought, or
* If the integration is invisible, then you will be guessing what is really under the covers.
If you are serious about the property, it MUST tick all your boxes, e.g. 4 bed, 2 bath, security, DLUG are ‘must have’ features. You may have other features such as electronic door locks, remote heat/cool and remote controlled lighting in your ‘should have’ or ‘could have’ list.
The agent should know how smart the house is and as a minimum how it or what operates what. As it is not the agent’s home I would not expect intricate details to roll off their tongue.
If you like the house enough (#1 priority) to make a serious offer, then it’s definitely time to ask some serious questions about how ’smart’ it is.
Here is my starter list of questions to the Agent:
1. What makes this house ‘smart’?
2. What will it control and what it won’t? (yes, you really need to ask the latter as more sometimes important than the former)
3. Does it all work right now?
You NEED to ask these questions to understand what the owner/agent has defined as ‘smart’. The agent is your contact person, they MUST be able to provide answers to your questions.
Best of luck with those 3 questions – there are more to ask if you are making an offer and looking at sale contracts.
Honestly though, put the ‘smarts’ into perspective, it is not the end of the world if the house is not as ’smart’ as you would like. More importantly you need rooms, access and security first.
One thing that is certain, the rate of development of smart environments is very, very rapid. You never know, there may already be a solution to shirk your irk!
Stay safe. Be Smart!
