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 Residential Market - Spring 2015 |
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In This Issue Yardi News Client News HNN Associates, LLC Optimizes Rental Pricing Performance with Yardi RENTmaximizer LumaCorp Inc. Reports Revenue, Marketing and Processing Benefits with Yardi Multifamily Solution Products Client in Focus Product & Technology News Mobile Maintenance Top 10 Benefits Does Business Intelligence Achieve Transparency? Payment Processing Collections Simplified Industry Trends Smart Pads Ready for Multifamily? Honey, I Shrunk the House! Events ContactYardi Systems Sales: 800-866-1144 |
Smart Pads Ready for Multifamily?Many of the newest smart-home devices are clearly aimed at homeowners or tenants—not landlords—such as apps for smartphones that control lights or appliances from a distance, which was a major push by Samsung at its Smart Which emerging smart-home technologies will be suitable for multi-family properties? That is still an open question for a number of reasons, expense included. Further, technology evolves so quickly that today's cool tech amenity might be tomorrow's standard, and so hardly something that would make a building stand out. "A number of tech features aren't popular in top-end rental or sale buildings because technology has evolved as a personal choice and has become relatively inexpensive," said Nancy Packes, multi-family marketing specialist. Few buildings, for example, would offer speakers built into the walls, regardless of how sophisticated those speakers were or powerful their woofers and tweeters. "Speakers have become very small and portable," Packes said. "How to place them is a personal choice." Also, there is the real risk of time bypassing what used to be state-of-the-art technology. "Technology changes too frequently," Packes noted. "Buildings were providing iPod docks at one point. That fad didn't last." On the other hand, multi-family has been the growth sector in commercial real estate in recent years, so some new tenant-pleasing technology features are being added to new space or retrofit into older space. Among the younger, rent-by-choice demographic, after all, tech is an important component of their lifestyle. The thinking is that properties with useful tech features stand a better chance of capturing that demographic. For example, "even in the older buildings we're seeing some retrofitting with fiber optics," said Gebroe-Hammer Associates president Ken Uranowitz, who brokers investment sales of multi-family properties in New Jersey and nearby states. "Being able to offer high-speed Internet can be an important amenity for some buildings." Important, but often expensive. Google has rolled out its Google Fiber program as a test in Austin, metro Kansas City and Provo, Utah, which offers 1-gigabit-per-second broadband service. For apartment buildings, the service costs about $300 per unit to install, and the information giant requires apartment landlords to pay the cost upfront within a year. There is a possibility that landlords can recoup part or all of that expense in the form of rebates from Google if tenants sign up for a premium version of the new Internet service, but that is not guaranteed. Still, a number of apartment owners feel that fiber optics is important enough to offer it (whether through Google or another system). Last year, for instance, Digital West Networks connected the Roundhouse Place Apartments in San Luis Obispo, Calif., to the fiber-optic network that the company has been building in the city since 2008. Currently, 23 miles of fiber-optic network are already in place in the area, providing 75 "lit" commercial buildings with Internet services normally found only in larger metro areas. The Roundhouse Place, which includes 39 market-rate units that are newly open for lease, is its first residential project. "The fiber has been a real attention-getter and a deal sweetener, especially for our tech-savvy renters," said Andrew Fuller, developer with Fuller Apartment Homes and Presidio Capital Partners. "For those who aren't as familiar with fiber optics, we tell them, 'It's kind of like the Google Fiber project comes to SLO,' and then they get it." This post first appeared in Commercial Property Executive. Read more on these new technologies and how they're affecting the multifamily industry, and learn how some properties are using them to stand out in a competitive marketplace. |
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Home exhibit at the Consumer Electronics Show earlier this year. |
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