A new residential property survey is suggesting that smart home tech can add to the resale value, though there are some big caveats.

The headline news is that more than a quarter of American homebuyers are now willing to pay a premium for smart homes, and that the average perceived value-add is $18k …

There are two elements to Vivint’s survey: an analysis of 35,000 home listings across the country, looking for price differences between those which do and don’t highlight smart home features, and a survey of 1,000 US buyers, asking how much they valued these when buying their new home.

The first part of that very clearly doesn’t mean anything. It showed that the average price of a smart home was almost double that of a non-smart home. The exact difference varied between cities, ranging from a 175% premium in Chicago to a negative premium in Texas locations like Arlington and Plano. (I’m saying nothing about Texans …)

In almost all cases, the differences are way too big to be related to the smart home element. You could clearly install your own smart home kit, or even have it done professionally, for a fraction of the premium. What we’re self-evidently seeing here is simply that pricier properties are more likely to have smart home tech. Correlation, not causation.

Similarly with the claimed premium buyers would pay. While $18,056 is a slightly more realistic number for a large home which has all the smart home tech money can buy, it’s still likely way more than people would really pay for a typical HomeKit setup.

My own experience, of selling one house and listing an apartment, is that it depends entirely on the buyer. Some of those viewing really loved the tech, and checked that it was included in the price. The couple who ended up buying my last house, in contrast, wanted my assurance that everything would be removed and replaced with dumb equivalents! It all seemed too complicated for them.

But for those who do appreciate smart home tech, here are the features they looked for, in decreasing order of importance:

• Smart security system (cameras, door locks, alarms) 65%
• Smart thermostat 57%
• Smart lighting 51%
• Water leak detection sensors 35%
• Smart appliances 31%
• Whole-home energy monitoring system 28%
• Smart garage door opener 25%
• Automated blinds or windows 20%
• Integrated home entertainment systems 18%

Personally, I don’t think I’d pay a premium unless everything was HomeKit-compatible and happened to match my own product tastes. In general, I’d much prefer to choose my own products – how about you?

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Photo by Islam Allam on Unsplash