Best Practices for Selling a Smart-Enabled Home

Smart home devices are everywhere, here’s our best practices for selling a smart-enabled home:

Video Transcript:

With smart home integrations on the rise, it’s important to correctly describe the devices that will be left with the home and the state of the automations at point of sale.

Here’s some tips:

1. Prepare a list of all smart devices that are staying with the home.
2. Remember that devices affixed to the home (like a Ring Doorbell or a smart lock) are a fixture and are assumed to be selling with the home unless specifically excluded.
3. Sellers should factory reset all smart devices at point of sale; buyers should also factory reset all smart devices when moving in. This helps protect everyone’s privacy and better ensures the seller has no access to any device remaining in the home.
4. Add a phrase like “All devices will be reset to factory defaults before transfer” on your smart device list to ensure the buyer is fully aware of the status
5. If you describe home automations, clarify that the buyer is responsible for the setup of those automations and may require a hub to accomplish them. For example, instead of saying “The lights come on when you come home”, the better description is “On our account we set up rules to have the lights come on when we came home.”

These steps help protect privacy and reduce frustration after closing.