What Smart Homes Mean for the Real Estate Game
Ever since Amazon launched the Echo in 2015, people around the world have been asking Alexa to turn up the volume on their favorite song, give the weather report for the day, or simply tell a joke. And with the release of the cheaper, smaller, and more accessible Echo Dot, Alexa has successfully infiltrated the modern home and established a new tech battleground, going up against products like Google Home. And this battleground is expected to reach a staggering $3.5 billion in spending by 2021. But what exactly does all of this mean for the real estate industry?
With a slough of new announcements including the Amazon Spot and sleeker cloth and wood finishes for the existing Echo, it’s clear that Amazon’s Alexa isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. There were also announcements for new Echo Buttons, and Echo Connect to facilitate a smoother phone call. But the most notable of these announcements is the Echo Plus, which can handily support 100 smart home appliances.
Smart home appliances like these change the game for agents and homeowners, who can now communicate with much greater ease, live more comfortably, and identify and report maintenance problems as soon as they occur. It’s a whole new way in which to live in a space, and homeowners will be looking for spaces that facilitate a smart home system in the future, as Google Home and the Amazon Echo continue to battle for smart home supremacy.
And now, apps like Voiceter Pro are bursting onto the scene and further innovating the real estate sphere. With Voiceter, an exclusive skill (Alexa’s version of apps) for Alexa, prospective buyer’s new homes are just a quick conversation away. It saves buyers the hassle of pulling out their computer and starting their housing search from scratch. Rather, they can ask Alexa to search by zip code or region, and Voiceter will email them options that match their search criteria, without having to type any words into a search engine.
Future applications of the Echo hardware are expected to give real estate professionals and homebuyers access to new ways to understand the most up-to-date data. For instance, skills already exist for Alexa that tell you how much your home might be worth after just a few short questions.
All of this amounts to a huge shift in the digital landscape of both real estate deals and the way in which homeowners interact with and manage their homes. Soon we’ll all be asking Alexa to “launch my mortgage calculator,” or to “call an agent to help me sell my house,” or simply: “Alexa, find me a new home.”
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