In a survey conducted in 2019 by the National Apartment Association with feedback from Multifamily Investors they ranked the 4 reasons for deploying smart-home tech across their communities. Here are the results:
- Attract and Retain Residents
- Operational Efficiencies
- Cost Savings
- Ancillary Revenue
When asked to explain their efforts more in depth they found, “three out of five owners and operators surveyed classified their smart-home initiatives as basic at this point. 62% of those are focused on technologies benefitting individual units such as smart thermostats, smart locks, lighting, and the ability to pay rent online.” A lot has changed since 2019 and with more people working from home it is safe to assume that residents are wanting to be more connected to their home and apartment communities.
Reading through that list I am sure that you saw how some of those could be applicable to deploying smart-home technology, or Smart Apartments, across your communities. If not, we are going to dive into these 4 reasons and discuss the different ways you can drive NOI with Smart Apartments.
Attract and Retain Residents
With smart home technology becoming more accessible to residents via companies like Amazon and Google, it has become less of a luxury and more of a necessity. Adding Smart Apartments as an amenity in your communities allows them to stand out to prospective tenants when compared to your competitors’ communities. This is an amenity that the tenants will use everyday when accessing their apartment, controlling their thermostat, or turning on and off lights as opposed to a pool which is seasonal.
As for retaining residents, the more that your residents become connected to their community the harder it is for them to unplug and move away from it. Smart Apartments build a new bond between residents and their home. When they are considering moving to another community that doesn’t have Smart Apartments it breaks that bond.
Operational Efficiencies
Keeping your communities operating at maximum efficiency can be the difference between a profitable year or a year in the red. Smart Apartments help to maximize your team's efficiency by reducing wasted time or reducing the likelihood of expensive repairs.
Your team is able to grant contractors access to units remotely via the Enterprise Dashboard either from a desktop or their mobile device. This reduces the need for staff to be onsite to unlock and lock doors as well as the possibility of missing keys. Your staff can even create temporary codes for contractors to use that can be erased from the system within minutes after the job is complete.
Expensive repairs like flooding is an owner or operators worst nightmare. The cost of the restoration, vacant units, and potential damage to other units can add up quickly. With flood sensors installed in the proper location and a Smart Water Valve you can take an expensive repair costing you tens of thousands of dollars down to a simple clean up with a towel and repair to the site of the leak.
Cost Savings
When operating a large community energy costs can quickly add up. When units are vacant there is no need for the heat or A/C to be constantly running and with thermostat schedules you can prevent that. The thermostat schedules allow you to control how warm or cool you let the unit get from the Enterprise Dashboard. Often when a contractor goes into a unit to work they’ll adjust the thermostat and forget to adjust it back once they leave for the day. The smart schedules will reset overnight adjusting the temperature back to optimal efficiency. Or you can lockout the thermostat completely allowing only staff who have access to the Enterprise Dashboard to control it. You can also implement these systems in common areas, gyms, and coworking spaces keeping the entire communities’ energy costs to an optimal level.
When it comes to having devices that can save you large expenditures like flood damage your insurance company is going to reward you. These savings can be around 10% of your current costs but you will have to check with your insurance provider to confirm. This savings alone will drive NOI of your communities.
Ancillary Revenue
In a study done by Wakefield Research among 1,000 U.S. renters in multi-family dwellings they found that, “on average, millennial renters would pay about a fifth more for smart home features.” Let’s just use some nice round numbers to explain what this could mean for you and your communities. At $1,000 per month you could now charge $1,200 per month per unit. With our Smart Apartment packages being no money down and range from $40-$75 per month at the least you are making an additional $125 in profit per month not counting operational efficiencies, energy costs, or insurance costs savings. At 100 units that is $12,500 in profit per month or $150,000 per year. At a 10% capitalization rate that adds $1,500,000 in value to your property.
Hopefully you can now see how Smart Apartments can drive NOI growth in your communities. If you want more information or a demo of our system feel free to email me at contact@automsecurity or call or text 513-899-8998.