Hello everyone and Welcome once again to
another episode of Selling Greenville
the podcast all about real estate here
in Greenville and the upstate of South
Carolina I am your host Stan McCune realtor
here in Greenville South Carolina and as
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every episode and hopefully all of this
content is helpful for everyone
that's listening today we're going to be
talking about smart home gadgets and
these have really really started to
pick up the past I would say honestly ly
two years we have really seen a major
increase in the number of smart home
gadgets and I think there's a variety of
reasons for that one is that some new
home builders are starting to add them
as part of new construction maybe as an
upgrade or maybe just as a standard
option I have seen it kind of either
way and I think it's starting to
become more of a mainstream type of
thing and so different people have
different understandings of smart
home
gadgets some of these help the value
of your home some of them just help
you in order to better manage your
home some of them help you in terms of
keeping your costs of living down and
so these are very powerful tools that
can help you in a variety of ways
and I have some experience with some
smart home gadgets I like technology I
like to to experiment with different
things this is not going to be an
all-inclusive show talking about every
single smart home Gadget and breaking
down and reviewing them I'm simply going
to going to take a
50,000 foot
view of these home gadgets what my
perspective is on them what experiences
that I've had with them and
from there you can do your own
research and and look at what is out
there and what the options are that are
out there so for starters I would like
to talk about the one that we are seeing
I I think more so at least for me as I
show houses that I see more often
probably than any of the others and that
is the doorbell camera so these
became really popularized with ring
ring might be the most popular version
of the doorbell camera but there's a lot
of other versions out there I have the
Vivant security system at my primary
residence they have doorbell cameras
with that I believe Simply Safe which is
another cheap security system that's
Wi-Fi based I think that they have I'm
sure they have doorbell cameras as well
there are all sorts of options for
doorbell cameras out there and we're
starting to see I mean I don't know what
the percentage would be but it's it's
starting to be particularly on homes
that are like less than 20 years old
let's say I would say a decent
percentage of them have these doorbell
cameras like maybe 20% in some
neighborhoods it's a lot more than that
in my neighborhood where I live I
would say probably 30 to 40% of the
homes in this neighborhood have
doorbell cameras and I have a very high
opinion of these doorbell cameras I
think that they are great they are
really
practical and here's why it's it they
actually accomplish multiple different
things for you and they're not very
expensive at all here are the things
that they accomplish one is it's very
simple that it's tied to an app on your
phone when someone Rings the camera you
autom rings the doorbell you
automatically get notified on your phone
no matter where you are and you can
instantly pull up who that person is and
and communicate with them as well
there's a microphone in there you can
communicate with them directly
and it allows you to be able to see
what's going on even when you're not
home or maybe you know in my case I have
a large basement that I spend a lot of
time in that's where I am right now as
I'm recording this you can be you
know if someone Rings my doorbell and
I'm in the basement doing something by
the time I wrap up what I'm doing run up
the stairs answer the door it could
be you know half a minute maybe even
longer than that maybe maybe 45 seconds
for a lot of people at that point
they're assuming that nobody is home and
so it may actually be quicker to just
pull it up on the app you hear that
doorbell you see who it is you want to
make sure that they don't leave or you
want to give them some kind of
instructions you pull that up real
quickly and you communicate with them
and let them know hey I'm here I'm
coming or whatever the case may be the
other very practical thing is that is
the security part of it that they are
actually actively recording what is
going on in front of your house and
for the way most of these cameras work
they're not tied directly necessarily to
a DVR they're not necessarily recording
every single minute of every single day
I'm sure that you can find some that
will do that that will you know back
that up to a DVR like a normal
surveillance system but what they
typically are doing is they're typically
going to be motion detected and they
will record when there is motion and
then you can go back and you can see you
know if if it picked up some type of
activity some type of motion you can go
back quite a ways and see you know okay
what was happening at that time this
came very handy a few weeks ago
well I guess more like a few months ago
we had a teenager that actually
knocked over our mailbox while riding
a bike I don't know how that was
possible possible I somehow the
teenager didn't get injured but we got
it all on camera and it was funny
actually cuz he was there with his
friend and the first thing they you know
they they are kind of standing around
the mailbox trying to figure out what to
do and then you hear them say oh man
they've got a doorbell camera and so
they knew there was no getting out of it
and that provided some accountability so
you know the kid to his credit he came
up he explained what happened he took
full ownership we didn't do anything
about that we just I I put my mailbox
back together and you know we did
some digging it was about an hour is
worth of work total and we we got that
sucker back in the ground but it it
provides a level of security that
otherwise you might not have without
a really expensive surveillance system
and it's really nice that you know the
wiring and everything it for in most
houses it's right there so it's very
simple to install but it provides for
you a lot of of different features it
really comes in handy and and I'm I'm
a big proponent I think the doorbell
camera has really revolutionize
things and I should mention I tell
this to my buyer clients but you need
to be very wary as as you're talking
outside of a home that you're looking at
be very wary if they might have that
doorbell camera because again it might
well even if it's not recording you the
person on the other end of that the
person can be watching through the app
so it records often times when it
detects motion but at any time someone
can just look at the live feed and can
hear what's going on so if you're out
there in front of a doorbell camera
discussing what you think about the
house there's a decent chance that the
seller is listening to you and you
need to be aware of that and that has
been used against buyers in some
instances and and you know if you can
maybe show your hand a little bit too
much or maybe say something disparaging
about the house that might come
across as
discriminatory who knows what it could
be the main thing is you need to be
careful look to see you know before you
start talking a lot of people like to to
discuss a house that they've looked at
once they're outside of it but you need
to be very wary there might be a
doorbell camera and you might be just
revealing everything you think about
that house directly to the seller
without any sort of filter and I do
not recommend that even if you have
great opinions of the house you don't
want to you don't really want to reveal
anything to the seller let your agent
give feedback the way the agent knows is
the best way to give feedback without
insulting anyone and also without
tipping your hand if you might be in a
situation where you might put an offer
in
later all right the next Gadget that
I have used that I am very bullish
about is the Smart
thermostat and really the there are
again several of these but the most
popular one is probably the nest some
of you may know the nest thermostat is
now controlled by Google Google
bought them out and the other one
would be the eccoe which is spelled kind
of weird but it's like e Eco like
eco-friendly and then B like the animal
like the insect B Eco B those are the
two main ones and even though these are
very similar Concepts they operate
very differently and they look very
differently now they both look very
high-tech oh by the way I should I
should mention let let me say one thing
real quick because this is important for
you all here in Greenville Duke
Energy which provides the power to a lot
of homes in the up State they have their
own smart thermostat and they will
give you one of those for free in order
to you know they they can basically
control some things remotely I'm not
going to get into all of that but it
gives them a little bit more control
than you probably want them to but at
the end of the day regardless of the
control that you're surrendering by by
allowing Duke to to use a Smart
thermostat in your home that is one of
their authorized
thermostats I do not recommend them
from the standpoint of functionality
they are in my opinion in my humble
opinion not good I would not recommend
them if Duke offers you to to upgrade
your thermostat to to one of their
proprietary smart thermostats I would
recommend personally just from my
experience that you kindly say no and
that you will keep your old dumb
thermostat or you know whatever other
thermostat that you might have but I
have had both so I've had the normal
dumb thermostat which is not smart I've
had that Duke smart thermostat I've had
an eccoe and I've had a nest and as I
was saying before the eccoe and the nest
are similar in some ways but very
different the ecoe you you really
want to set up different schedules
and and you have to do this manually and
it's not that it's not a bad system
it's a more of a touchscreen interface
and it works quite well for what it does
it really the reason why I originally
got the ecobe was that it came with
sensors so room sensors so I used to
live in a tri level home and I mean talk
about the pockets of the home that
were hot or cold I mean Tri level homes
are just a nightmare when you only have
a single AC or a single furn to keep the
temperatures consistent and we never had
consistency so so we got the ecob
therat that allowed us to have a few
different sensors that we could place in
different parts of the home and that
helped us to track the temperatures and
the different parts of the home and then
it also has some you know unique
features where you can either make that
sensor your your primary sensor and so
you know let's say you have your your
AC set at 71 you could have it to
where it's based on whether or not the
master bedroom is
71 and then if it's not then the AC
will will kick on it can also the
ecoe sensors also will detect
motion as well so that's kind of neat
so it it it does some smart things where
it can kind of figure out what part of
the house that you're in what part of
the house needs to be cooled whether or
not maybe it needs to go in
not vacation mode but like eco mode
where it's not
necessarily heating or cooling the
house because it doesn't detect any
activity the eccoe had an option
where you could actually average all
of the sensors in the home and it would
heat or cool the home based on the
average of the
sensors and that was pretty neat I
really like the eccoe that's a great
thermostat it it it got us a lot
of use at our old home I will say
probably my favorite out of all of them
is the nest thermostat it's just simple
it's it's you've seen them before I'm
sure it's just like a a round very
futuristic looking device that just has
the temperature in in the middle and you
just turn it you turn it right clockwise
if you want to the temperature to go up
you turn it counterclockwise towards the
left if you want the temperature to go
down and what it does is is it's a
they call it a Smart Learning thermostat
because it will start to detect your
patterns when you are turning it up or
when you're turning it down and then it
will automatically do that in the future
so that you don't have to keep doing
that every time if every night you know
at 10:00 you turn it down to to 68
because you like to be cold at night the
thermostat pretty quickly will figure
out that you're doing that and then next
next thing you know you go to turn it
down at 10:00 to 68 it's already down to
68 because the thermostat already
figured out that that's what your
pattern is my biggest complaint with
the nest has been that because that's
what I have currently at my at my
current house U my biggest complaint
is simply that sometimes that learning
is is a little bit clunky sometimes
it wants to learn something that I don't
want it to learn it may you know
register something and I'm you know
honestly probably some of you are
listening you're just like I know a work
around to this there's they have
something in place to prevent this I'm
sure I don't know everything there is to
know about the nest and probably there
is some type of a workaround that if you
just want to turn a temperature up or
down just one time and you don't want it
to be a setting there's probably a way
to do that I do know that there is a way
that you can go in and look at where all
the all the temperature settings are
in the nest app and you can just delete
them as as necessary or change them as
necessary so so you can manually do
it as well if if you need to and that's
that's pretty cool but I have in my
current home I have an upstairs and a
downstairs Nest so I have two
different thermostats and then I
recently bought separately because it
doesn't come with them temperature
sensors for our different rooms and it's
not quite as flexible as the as the
EOB I I think the EOB sensors are
definitely more advanced than the nest
sensors but the nest sensors work fine
it's it's a way that I can track
temperatures in different rooms you can
you can set different temperature
settings for those different rooms you I
don't believe that you can average them
like you can on the ecobe which I think
is kind of a cool feature that the ecobe
offers I haven't been able to tell
that they're motion detecting I don't
believe that they're motion detecting
but but they're useful I I bought a
pack of three of them for $100 so it's
it's not that much but it allows you to
be able to get more control and more
data as to what's happening in
your house you know we believed that
some of the bedrooms were were hotter
than it turns out that they actually are
so sometimes your your perception
doesn't meet with your reality when it
comes to temperature and that's
something that we've learned with Those
sensors and so I definitely think
that they are
useful and again with all these smart
thermostats you can control them
remotely and one thing that's great
about the the the doorbell camera and
the smart thermostat these are really
useful for your rentals as well if
you have rental properties having
that doorbell camera can can help you to
see you know if there's something going
on that needs to be addressed
having the smart thermostat you know
maybe if you're doing short-term
rentals you you might be in a situation
where you have you know a week where no
one's on the property and maybe the
people before forgot to turn the the
temperature up you know during the the
summer so that it wasn't just cooling
unnecessarily well guess what you just
pull up your app and you just do it
yourself or you know if the
thermostat is programmed to detect if
there's no motion that it automatically
turns to the temperature up that's
another great energy saving feature
as well so there's lots of cool things
the The Nest as well one thing that I
I think is kind of neat is it tells me
what my indoor humidity is so I
really like that and they have a
feature where you can actually expunge
the humidity they do warn that it
uses quite a bit of power in order to do
that but there's a lot of different
things I mean there are so many features
I'm sure I haven't even you know
gotten anywhere close to fully
maximizing the potential of those
thermostats but just even on The
Superficial level they have been very
useful another thing this is very
different than the first two things but
this is something that that I
recently have Acquired and I think it
makes a really big difference is a Wi-Fi
extender or a mesh router and and
there's a few different a few
different products out there that are
very similar to this but this is
basically when you have a a a home where
there are parts of the house that are
not getting a great Wi-Fi signal you can
boost that Wi-Fi signal with a Wi-Fi
extender or you know you might call it a
mesh router something like that you can
boost that signal and that way the the
parts of your house that typically are
are weak may not be as weak anymore so I
recently put this downstairs we we've
got our Wi-Fi router in a corner of
the upstairs you know living room and
well we've got an entire you know we've
got a a basement a finished basement
that basically runs the entire length of
our main house and so the the Wi-Fi
down here would sometimes get dicey and
we'd run into situations where in our
movie theater room where we're trying to
stream Netflix or whatever sometimes
we'd run into some buffering I extended
a a sorry I installed a Wi-Fi
extender down here it's a Netgear I'm
looking at it right now Netgear
dualband Wi-Fi extender I'm no expert
on any of this stuff but let me just say
that the way it worked it definitely
I have seen a major difference now you
don't necessarily see your speed
increase because the way I understand
that they work it actually uses some of
your bandwidth so so sorry I let me
clarify that you won't necessarily see
an increase in your bandwidth if you
run some tests to to to do the speed
tests but you will see a difference in
terms of the speed because now it's
almost like you're closer to the signal
and that's exactly what I've experienced
our technically our band bandwidth seems
like it's it's a little bit lower if
I run some different tests but
practically I have not run into a single
buffering issue since I've extended that
thing and I used to run into buffering
issues when on Zoom calls or or on
Netflix or whatever quite frequently
that's not happening at all now and
so that's a very basic thing that
honestly a lot of people if you're in a
big multi-level house where you have
you know Wi-Fi in in a corner of of the
house and not getting a good signal in
another part of the house or maybe a big
Ranch that's something that you
should strongly
consider another product that I have
used and have only dabed a little bit in
but I like the idea and I like the
potential of it is the is smart
Outlets so smart Outlets are
basically just what they sound like all
of these smart gadgets are things that
are connected to the internet and that
you can control with your phone in one
way or another and I guess the Wi-Fi
extender wasn't technically a smart
Gadget but it's kind of in the same
class well the smart Outlets are very
similar where they're basically there
there's a lot of different options out
there but on the most basic fundamental
level they just allow you to be able to
control an outlet using your phone so
you might have something plugged in
into a smart outlet that you want to
turn off and and you want to have the
ability to just turn that off
remotely those are great for that so an
an example might be you know maybe you
have a lamp that you want to turn
on you know you might you get some
action for instance on your doorbell
camera and you're wondering you know
hey is it possible that something might
be going on and you know that there
might be someone snooping around my
house well guess what if you've got a
lamp plugged into a smart outlet you can
turn that lamp on make someone on the
outside think that there's someone
inside the house you might have you
know something plugged in for
instance if you've got like teenagers at
home of course they might be able to
to figure out workarounds of course but
if you have you know kids at home or
whatever and you want to shut off you
know the TV or whatever from your phone
remotely or whatever the case may be you
could do that if it were plugged into a
smart outlet they have Outlets they have
little adapters that you can just plug
straight into the outlet or they have
ones where it's the entire Outlet itself
that you can just replace and for those
of you that have never replaced an
outlet before it's I I have to
legally recommend you get an electrician
to do that kind of stuff but I'm not the
handiest dude in the world and I have
been able to to replace Outlets before
so go ahead and hire an electrician
if you've never done it before but
also know that there are lots of YouTube
videos and whatnot out there on on how
to do that if you decide to take your
life into your own
hands another thing that I think is
is really a game Cher is the the
Smart Lock and these are things they
they haven't gained as much traction yet
uh
as you might expect but it's not
surprising when you really think about
it people don't like to change their
locks like it doesn't honestly it's not
very hard but it's just like you know
you just get into the routine of you've
got the key you you know you always do
the same thing every time you open and
close your front door but let me tell
you it is just like when you know for
some of us we switched over to vehic
Les where you no longer have to to you
know put the key in the ignition you
just press the button and it detects
that you have the key in the car that is
the difference and and and I am as I'm
recording this right now my car is in
the shop and I've got a loner vehicle
right now and The Loner is it's it's a
2020 so it's nice but it's the base
model and we have to put the key in the
ignition and it when you are used to
just pressing the button putting the key
in the ignition feels like you know like
a ton of work I know that sounds
ridiculous but but it really is one
of those small things just being able to
press the button a small thing that adds
a good deal of value and for your home
where you're going in and out of the
door so often having a Smart Lock one
that you can control from your phone but
also that you can just put a code in at
the door and never pull out a key
that it is really really nice it is much
more of a game Cher in my opinion than
it is for the car not having to to put a
key in the
ignition I love it I have all of my
locks now like that and again if you're
doing rentals I've got a lock that
actually integrates with Airbnb so that
when new guests come onto or new guests
range for a stay with my property
that's a short-term rental when they
arrange that through Airbnb it
automatically synchronizes with my lock
and sends them a proprietary code that
only they will use that will only be
active during their stay so that is that
is super cool it just automatically as
soon as they book it they get an email
from the lock and I love that I
think that that's a really neat feature
I think that that really you know
helps the the Airbnb to stand out as
well you know people they see that and
they're like oh wow I've never gotten
that the other airbnbs that I've stayed
at and it makes them feel secure
right because you know there's not been
Keys handed out to other people there's
not the code that they're using isn't a
code that other people have used and
so I think that I think that that's
really cool I'm a big fan of the
Smart Lock you know you again it's a
similar kind of thing where you know
let's say that someone comes and and
visits your home they arrive a little
bit sooner than you're expecting them to
and you need to let them in you can from
your phone wherever you are unlock that
door that's a pretty sweet feature and
that's something that you know I
think that once you once you get that
and once you go there I don't really
think that you can turn back from I
don't see myself turning back from that
I think that that's going to be a
long-term fixture for me in in any
future house that I move to
changing gears a little bit from
from those things and by the way I I
should
mention some of you will probably want
to know are these things improving home
value and I I don't think that they
are like a major factor in home value
like we don't see some homes that have
you know a few smart features selling
for thousand more than homes that don't
because people know that they can easily
add those smart home gadgets to their
home for just a few hundred bucks but I
know for the clients that like that type
of Technology when they go into a house
that already has it that is a selling
feature for them it's just one less
thing that they have to to up update
once they come in it's one less expense
and and it is something that they
like and I haven't heard many people
that are like
oh man I really wish that this home
didn't have all this technology for the
most part people are are pretty much on
board with it I know not everyone cares
you know with you know Alexa and and
the echo and Echo dots and all of
those things not everyone cares for the
fact that it's listening to you all the
time but the reality is our phones are
listening to us all the time anyway we
kind of lost that fight and lost that
battle a while ago and so for the most
part people are very positive when they
see that homes have been updated with
with Smart Home Technology they are
very much INF favor of it and also
indicates that the that the owner that
the seller of the home has has done
updates and has invested in the home
because the reality of the situation is
a lot of people don't do a whole lot to
their homes and so if you have someone
that updated that that that was willing
to upgrade their thermostat that's a
good sign that they they probably did
some other updates as well that they
probably cared about their home to some
extent and so I think that that makes
buyers feel more secure as well so I
think it's more of a the type of
thing that makes like I said makes
buyers feel comfortable with a home and
makes it to where it's like okay I want
to put an offering on this home but
doesn't necessarily mean that they're
going to spend $5,000 more in order to
get that home if that makes sense
these next two things the last two
things on my list these aren't things
that are are fixtures in your home but
these are things that I just want to
mention because I've worked with them
I've used them I have them and I would
recommend them just
practically one is the fire stick
this is produced by Amazon and I am a
big fan of the fire stick I've used
Apple TV Apple TV is good it's really
Sleek works very well and I am an
Apple guy okay so the fire stick I
just think is better I use Amazon a
lot and of course you can you can put
your Apple account on the fire stick so
that anything that you purchased through
Apple still comes through you know if
you purchase movies on Apple you still
can stream them on your fire stick
and the fire stick has the nice
functionality that you can go into
programmer mode for instance you know
some people know what the term
jailbreaking is you can do stuff like
that to get some apps that maybe
are not in the Amazon app store which
opens up a whole new world depending on
you know how geeky you are I can be kind
of I have a geeky side so that that can
be kind of interesting for me but the
the fire stick is really well done
we get a ton of use out of it and that's
a simple way to upgrade your TV from a
not smart TV into a smart TV and
honestly I have Smart TVs where I use
the fire stick on it because I just
prefer it a lot of smart TVs out there
the smart TV technology is not good with
them the fire stick just gives me
uniformity allows me to have everything
synchronized across all my TVs and that
way I don't have to worry about okay you
know this Samsung and this TCL TV they
have two different interfaces and not
you know we're logged into different
things no we don't have to worry about
any of that and so I'm I'm very
bullish on on the fire
stick another thing that's fairly new
technology that is a real game changer
is the robot vacuand there's now a
lot of different robot vacuums that that
are out there and I've only interacted
with a few of them but these things
are great I mean they really make clean
up particularly if you have kids or or
animals in the house it makes it so much
simpler and I think the main thing
that I've learned from them are a the
battery life is really important like
the amount of square footage that it can
hit in one run really makes or breaks
the the vacuitself and the way
these vacuums work is they just kind of
bounce around the house and they kind of
learn where all your furniture is and
once the battery gets low after it's
bounced around the house and sucked up a
bunch of a bunch of dirt and whatnot
it just goes back to the dock and it
just resets itself now the good ones
that are out there will com will
completely map out the house and let you
just let you see the map of the house
and then you can
actually select specific areas that you
want it to go to or deselect areas that
you don't want it to go to and I really
like that feature I highly recommend
making sure that your robot vacuhas
that feature I would also strongly
consider ones that have the ability
to mop as well I think that that the
one that I currently have that I'm using
does not have the mopping feature Fe and
we have a separate one that's a a
cheaper one that we'll mop but I think
it's it's kind of cool having the
all-in-one that it can it can vacuum
and it can mop we have a lot of
hardwoods in our home and a lot of
tile and so that's something that
that really comes in handy and that
helps to to keep the house clean so
we're not always sweeping not always
vacuuming and that's something that
that I have gotten and my wife has
gotten a lot of use out of over the
years so that's it that is some smart
home technology that that you can
utilize in your home in your rentals
whatever the case may be there is so
and there's way more out there I mean I
didn't even get into all these
different hubs that are out there and
whatnot there is a ton a ton of
Technology you can geek out as much as
you want on any of that stuff I I
think think it's all great I think that
we've we're now seeing our homes become
connected in a way that you know a
few years ago just never even seemed
possible and it's just really making
the whole home experience just such a
cleaner more pleasant experience
technologically as always if you have
any questions or any comments feel free
to you can always leave those on the
on the show itself you know leave us a
rating or a review but you can always
reach out to me as well shoot me a
text shoot me an email give me a call
and let me know if you or anyone else
that you know needs a realtor
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