Embracing PropTech:How to Create Smart Homes and IoT for Real Estate

Automation of Processes

The importance of delegating processes to technology cannot be overstated. IoT-powered apps for real estate help:

Improved Service Quality

Real estate employees often have to juggle numerous tasks throughout the day. While multitasking can be effective in some cases, it typically leads to poor-quality service. Why not relieve them of this burden with a single mobile or web app? Even an app with basic features can help with property management, searching, scheduling viewings, and estimating property costs.

Client-Centric Approach

In business, time is money. A real estate app with key features speeds up the decision-making process by sending personalized property offers to potential buyers and providing customer-related insights to professionals. Real estate agents can analyze how the target audience makes decisions and develop new sales and marketing strategies.

Predictive Analysis

IoT for real estate is ideal for predictive analytics, helping identify problems with home appliances, buildings, power consumption, and more. Smart sensors and devices gather the necessary information and upload it to the real estate app, which then sends alerts and push notifications to property managers or owners.

This proactive approach enables timely issue resolution and increases service quality and customer satisfaction. Besides, this real estate technology helps protect buildings from natural disasters by enabling timely repairs.

Smarter Properties

We live in an age of advanced technologies, and it would be a mistake not to use them to the advantage of the real estate industry. Properties equipped with built-in IoT sensors are highly sought after. Smart office spaces, homes, and even warehouses are in high demand. Large companies and individual tenants prefer energy-efficient spaces where they can control the environment and reduce operational costs.

Smart hubs

The smart hub acts as the central command center for your smart home ecosystem, enabling communication between your devices.

Some brands, such as SimpliSafe Home Security, have hubs that are not compatible with devices from other brands. However, others, like the Amazon Echo, can work with a variety of third-party products.

Wi-Fi is a widely used operating standard for smart houses. If you choose Wi-Fi-compatible devices, you don't need to buy a separate smart home hub—the Internet router you already have will suffice.

Z-Wave and Zigbee are other common operating standards. To cover everything, we recommend getting a hub that can translate between these different languages, like the Aeotec Smart Home Hub.

IoT device software

Most real estate IoT devices, whether they have sensors, actuators, or both, consist of hardware and software. Sensors include cameras, motion detectors, carbon monoxide sensors, light sensors, and other devices that monitor their surroundings. Actuators can be switches, valves, locks, and other equipment that perform physical actions.

Thanks to Moore's law and other tech advancements, even affordable IoT devices today can be quite sophisticated, with powerful microprocessors running complete software stacks. They are primarily used to connect the sensor or actuator to the outside world via wired or wireless connections.

Gateway software

The most popular IoT devices in smart houses or smart buildings today use Zigbee or Z-Wave protocols. These devices consume minimal power but have sufficient transmission range. Home and building networks typically rely on Ethernet or WiFi.

To connect the devices to the local network, an IoT gateway is used. The gateway can perform basic functions such as connecting the devices and accessing them through the local network.

As gateways become more powerful, they can offer advanced capabilities, such as using artificial intelligence to interpret sensor data, taking actions based on that data, and performing higher-level functions.

Smartphone app

An app gives you the power to control or monitor your smart devices remotely. Just download the companion app, pair it with your hub, and you're good to go.

With a mobile application, you can fine-tune device settings and schedules. Some apps even offer usage reports and tips to help you get the most out of your device.

As you accumulate devices, you may end up using multiple apps to control them all. But your smart home hub app, like Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant, can be the command center for all your devices, as long as they're compatible.

Cloud software

Cloud software is a critical component of a comprehensive IoT solution. Amazon (AWS), Microsoft (Azure), Google (Google Cloud), IBM (IBM Cloud), and other cloud service providers offer a wide range of IoT platform components. These components can be seamlessly integrated into smart houses and smart building deployments, enabling efficient management, monitoring, and control of IoT devices.

By using cloud-based services, IoT devices can communicate and share data with the cloud platform. This allows users to access and manage their smart devices remotely, making the control of their smart houses or buildings convenient and flexible.