As smart devices and connected appliances spread into every nook and cranny, home automation is big business.
Evidenced by Google’s $3.2B acquisition of Nest and Comcast’s increased push into controlling all aspects of a house, the home automation market shows no signs of slowing down.
But there’s a large wrinkle for a canny company to capitalize on—what aboutrenters who want an automated way to control the place they lease?
A tenant’s quest for an automated rental property could lead to sticky issues of ownership, compatibility, and even privacy.
That’s where Remotely enters the picture.
Designed by Rentbits, the app aims to provide a home automation solution that makes tenants and property managers happy. By positioning itself as a value-added solution for property owners, it hopes to become an essential app on the smart phones of renters nationwide.
We spoke with Rentbits CEO Dan Daugherty to get his thoughts on the future of home automation in the rental market.
What home automation inefficiencies is Remotely solving?
The home automation market is expected to reach over $12B by 2017, but we saw major holes in the rental market.
On average, renters are in an apartment for around a year, and it doesn’t make sense for them to get locked into an expensive multi-year home automation contract or install hardware that they won’t be able to keep when their lease is up.
On the property manager side, we solve inefficiencies with regards to off-the-shelf home automation systems. If every resident of an apartment community bought a home automation system of their own, nothing would be integrated.
A property manager wouldn’t be able to go keyless; they wouldn’t own the locks, thermostats, or motion detectors within each unit.
What can a tenant control with the app?
A tenant can control their entire apartment or rental home with the app. They can lock and unlock doors, control their thermostat, control lights, control music, detect motion, moisture, and more. We even have some users who wanted to automate their dog feeding dish.
We built Remotely to be completely agnostic, meaning we currently work with over 1,000 smart devices, and we are able to connect to most new smart devices.
Apartment complexes are also using Remotely for common areas including the pool, front gate, leasing office, game rooms and laundry facilities.
A renter has about 15 automations occur each day in their apartment. It doesn’t take much convincing for residents to download the app—they see the immediate benefits of simplifying their life.
What about residents without smartphones?
For residents who don’t have smart phones, they would still be able to set automated rules on any computer and enter the apartment either with a key or a 4-digit code.
Over time, the system would be able to at least save them on energy bills even if they never proactively used the app or the web interface.
Do landlords and tenants see the same view of a property?
Tenants only see what is relevant to them. They control their apartment, but they also have access to pay their rent online and submit maintenance requests if the property manager opts them in.
Could a landlord use the data they collect against a tenant?
Remotely does not give out any usage data at the apartment unit level.
What are the major roadblocks Remotely faces in growing adoption?
As with any new technology, you have first adopters and then everyone else. Home automation has reached an inflection point where we are now seeing more early adopters because the technology has been proven and can scale.
What does the future of home automation hold?
In the U.S., we have around 25 million rental units in our sights, and we believe our total addressable market is around $3B. The long term vision for Remotely is to positively affect the lives of millions of renters through home automation software.
We also believe that home automation should learn about you over time. For example, the software should automatically set the temperature to the ideal energy saving position when you’re gone and set it back to a comfortable level when you come home. Or it should automatically turn on your lights when you’re on your way home from dinner.
The possibilities are endless. We are building the personalized operating system for every rental home and apartment.
Original article titled: Home Automation Q&A: Rentbits CEO Dan Daugherty taken from www.realtor.com | By: Erik Gunther
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