PROPERTYSPARK ARTICLE

Why You Should Make Your Buy-to-Let A Smart Home

If you’ve been paying attention to the property market over the past few years, you will have heard a thing or two about Smart Homes, these are houses that use new automation and convenience technologies to improve the efficiency of the home. While a few years ago, smart homes were seen as a luxury, that only well-off technophiles would want; recent advances in technology has made smart home technology more affordable and accessible now in 2023.

So, as a landlord with a buy-to-let property, what does the rise of the smart home mean for you? And how can you benefit from all this awesome new technology?

Smart Homes Are The Future

As a landlord it is important that you keep track of developments in the property market, to ensure that your properties will be attractive to good tenants. If you don’t keep your properties up with market trends you won’t be able to maintain the same caliber of tenant, but by keeping with the times you can make sure that your properties will remain attractive to potential renters.

According to Statista as of 2023 53% of homes in the UK have some sort of Smart Home technology and proliferation of smart home technology is only expect to grow further, with estimates predicting that around 98% of UK households will have some form of Smart Home technology by 2027.

So, if you don’t want you and your buy-to-let properties to be left by the wayside in the Smart Home revolution, you’ll want to ensure you have some level of Smart Home technology for your properties.

Smart Homes Are Attractive To Tenants

Looking at another study of 1,000 UK based renters, we can see that there is significant demand for Smart Homes from renters. In the aforementioned study around 20% of respondents reported that they would be happy to pay 10% more in rent each month for smart features in their home. So by investing in Smart Home technology now, you can increase your rental revenue by 10% right off the bat.

According to the Guardian the average rent in the UK (excluding London) is £1,190, meaning with a 10% boost from Smart Home technology an average rent would be £1,309 a month – Equating to an extra £1,428 in rent each year.

What Smart Home Tech Do Tenants Want?

Looking back to the earlier study by Wise Living Homes, we can see that 75% of respondents would prefer a property with smart lighting solutions (such as electric window shades and smart lightbulbs) or smart heating solutions (such as remote controlled or automated climate control) and another 74% preferring properties with smart security systems (such as Ring video doorbells and smart locks).

How Much Will Smart Home Adoption Cost You?

As mentioned earlier, Smart Home technology has become incredibly affordable in recent years and factoring in a 10% increase in rent any Smart Home technology you add to your buy-to-let would pay for itself relatively quickly.

For example: if you were to provide a Smart Speaker like an Amazon Alexa (£34.99), four Electric Roller Blinds from DotcomBlinds.com (£114 each for an average sized window), and a Ring Doorbell system (£59.99) – You would have to spend a total of £550.98 – For an average rental property, this would be paid off in less than 6 months when factoring in a 10% rent increase.