8 ms·

I recently moved and took everything with me. This included replacing z-wave light switches and outlets with normal ones. I swapped everything out before we lis

I recently moved and took everything with me. This included replacing z-wave light switches and outlets with normal ones. I swapped everything out before we listed the house. The reality is that most people will just be confused by this sort of stuff and you aren’t going to get any extra money when you sell your house. It’s a pain, but assuming you don’t move very often it’s worth it. Now I have all the things in my new house and it’s setup just the way I like.

ashleyn 9y ago
The not adding value to the house bit is important. Nobody really knows about or cares enough about home automation to justify an added expense on the cost of the home. Maybe this will change when the "iPhone of home automation" finally comes out. Also Z-wave stuff is EXPENSIVE! so if it's not going to up the value of the house then I'm basically giving that stuff away for free.
- Silhouette 9y ago
  The not adding value to the house bit is important. Nobody really knows about or cares enough about home automation to justify an added expense on the cost of the home. I'd actually go further. I do care about home automation, because it is almost certainly a negative and possibly a deal-breaker for me to put any offer in to buy a place. If it has anything installed that has any form of off-site access or any dependency on a remote service then I am going to require the existing owner to remove it and make good at their own expense as a condition of any offer (other than possibly a suitably approved alarm system with clearly detailed monitoring arrangements and contacts). Likewise if there is anything installed that relies on any sort of sensors or "smart" control systems, I am going to require credible written guarantees about the security, privacy, safety and longevity of that system, or far more likely it is again going to have to be removed and made good at the current owner's expense as a condition.
  - commandar 9y ago
    The interesting legacy corollary here is that it's completely bog standard for home security systems to be left in place when a house is sold. I say this because the systems that ADT, etc sell these days are largely made up of white labeled COTS Z-Wave sensors with the security panel just being a hub and interface to the Z-Wave network. The house I moved into this past year is covered by sensors for an old ADT system that are useless to me, and I've been slowly removing them and replacing them with equivalent Z-Wave e.g., door and motion sensors as I get to it. Whenever I move, I'll take the hub with me. Any sensors that get left behind would be almost entirely equivalent to an old security system being left in the house except for the fact that they'd be pairable with any system the new owner decides to put in place since they're actually standards based.
    - mcguire 9y ago
      Do you have any links to information about standards based products? I haven't run across any casually, which is why i haven't looked.
      - commandar 9y ago
        Most whitelabel home automation stuff runs on the Z-Wave protocol. Zigbee is also fairly popular for some applications; it's what e.g., Philips Hue runs on. Devices using either of these will generally pair with any hub with the appropriate radios like Smart Things. There's additionally a class of home automation stuff that runs over WiFi; they more generally have proprietary communication protocols and I personally avoid them for the most part.
    - enobrev 9y ago
      Just as well, if you plan to sign up with ADT, they insist upon new equipment. I just went through this. We bought our house in February. ADT was sending crap almost daily so I called to see what they were offering. They absolutely would not use the 3-year old equipment in the house. Installation would come with new equipment. I didn't care either way, but thought that was notable. No matter; I wasn't interested, and I was happy to get rid of all the their signs and stickers.
  - khedoros1 9y ago
    Mostly, I don't care about home automation. I don't care so much about the previous owner removing the components, because I'm sure that I can do it when I move in. Anything that can be set up for remote access is at least being disconnected, if not removed entirely.
  - ensignavenger 9y ago
    "if there is anything installed that relies on any sort of sensors" So, no smoke or CO2 alarms in your house?
    - Silhouette 9y ago
      Especially things like those. If you can give me evidence they are properly set up, working, and compliant with all applicable advice and regulations, that's great, I'll be happy to have them. Otherwise, get rid of them, and I'll get my own properly fitted by a suitably qualified professional, thanks. Those things save lives, and I'm not going to cut corners to save a few bucks, only to find that your hack job installer didn't connect them to repeat alarms properly throughout the building, or you used some trendy junk that doesn't actually work reliably if the power goes out, Internet is down, or some other dumb thing that should have nothing at all to do with safety systems ever.
      - ensignavenger 9y ago
        All smoke alarms use sensors, whether or not they are connected to the Internet.
        Silhouette 9y ago
        No kidding...
- hkmurakami 9y ago
  There are people like me who actively avoid home automation too. Seeing a nest at an open house is a negative.
  - lukejduncan 9y ago
    As a home buyer, why is it a negative? It seems like it would represent such a small % of the purchase price and could be easily included in the negotiation as needing to be removed by the owner before you move in.
    - hkmurakami 9y ago
      Yeah I agree. But I still get a negative psychological reaction since I dislike any and all smarthome products, which colors my impression of the property. Illogical I know, but it's a reality for me and other home buyers / home sellers. It's like staging a home right? None of this furniture comes with the house but how it's staged absolutely influences your impression of the home.
      - andrewem 9y ago
        I get that psychological aspect - it makes you think the current owners have poor judgment, and so what else did they mess up? That's also why you should do simple maintenance and cleaning when trying to sell a house, because if a person neglected to eg rake the leaves, who knows what else was necessary which they didn't do.
jasonkostempski 9y ago
I would consider it to devalue the home. I don't ever want that kind of thing in my house but, even if I did, I'm not going to trust anyone to properly transfer whatever cloud access they have to things in my home, so it will all have to be removed anyway.
- heartbreak 9y ago
  Who said anything about the cloud? I know what you mean though; if I had to use a cloud service, I definitely wouldn't want it in my house. In my experience it's easier to set this stuff up without the crummy proprietary cloud services anyway.
  - leereeves 9y ago
    But even if you do set it up without the cloud services, can you prove that to a buyer who isn't experienced with the technology?
- ocdtrekkie 9y ago
  If your house uses good standard local communication protocols, like Z-Wave, ZigBee, or Insteon, you can take your cloud devices, and a new owner can just buy a new hub device with their own cloud account and connect the devices to it. Doesn't matter what the other person has in their account at that juncture. That being said, if I was ever to leave home automation hardware behind, it'd be a "if you want to pay x on top of the already agreed upon price for the property, I'll leave it", where x is the cost for me to just buy new modules for my new place.
  - pavel_lishin 9y ago
    > you can take your cloud devices, and a new owner can just buy a new hub device with their own cloud account and connect the devices to it. That sounds like a pain in the ass. > if I was ever to leave home automation hardware behind, it'd be a "if you want to pay x on top of the already agreed upon price for the property, I'll leave it I don't want to buy new crap to deal with the crap you left behind. I'd argue that you ought to pay me for dealing with some arbitrary hardware that I've now inherited. This is the equivalent of leaving some finicky boiler system whose spare parts can only be ordered from a single factory in Germany.
ashark 9y ago
We may be listing ours soon, and if we do I'm even swapping the LED bulbs for whatever's cheapest at the store. They're only about a year old and the house will sell for zero more dollars if I leave them up.
- pavel_lishin 9y ago
  How much are the LED bulbs? I don't think I'd bother taking the time to save fifty bucks on a house move.
  - ashark 9y ago
    Heh, it'll be less than 1% of the total time I spend doing touch-ups and such. Maybe three minutes to save, yeah, $50-75. A tiny extra amount of effort on the actual packing and move, but time saved buying new bulbs when the ones in the next house start burning out makes up for that. Besides, I've got most of 'em in in-socket splitters (makes one bulb socked into two) in crappy basement fixtures which I'm pretty sure will make an inspector look twice, so probably worth taking down ahead of time anyway.
    - lucaspiller 9y ago
      Three minutes to change all the bulbs?
      - stronglikedan 9y ago
        Sure, if you have nine people helping you.
      - ashark 9y ago
        A half-dozen lightbulbs, and that long for taking the new ones out of the box and moving the ladder around.
  - Zpalmtree 9y ago
    At least in the UK some packs of LED bulbs go up to something like £50 for 3.
thearn4 9y ago
I added z-wave switches to my house, but honestly they function enough like normal switches that I would just leave them if I sold the house (but take the controller with me). I never used any cloud services though.

ashleyn 9y ago

The not adding value to the house bit is important. Nobody really knows about or cares enough about home automation to justify an added expense on the cost of the home. Maybe this will change when the "iPhone of home automation" finally comes out. Also Z-wave stuff is EXPENSIVE! so if it's not going to up the value of the house then I'm basically giving that stuff away for free.

Silhouette 9y ago
The not adding value to the house bit is important. Nobody really knows about or cares enough about home automation to justify an added expense on the cost of the home. I'd actually go further. I do care about home automation, because it is almost certainly a negative and possibly a deal-breaker for me to put any offer in to buy a place. If it has anything installed that has any form of off-site access or any dependency on a remote service then I am going to require the existing owner to remove it and make good at their own expense as a condition of any offer (other than possibly a suitably approved alarm system with clearly detailed monitoring arrangements and contacts). Likewise if there is anything installed that relies on any sort of sensors or "smart" control systems, I am going to require credible written guarantees about the security, privacy, safety and longevity of that system, or far more likely it is again going to have to be removed and made good at the current owner's expense as a condition.
- commandar 9y ago
  The interesting legacy corollary here is that it's completely bog standard for home security systems to be left in place when a house is sold. I say this because the systems that ADT, etc sell these days are largely made up of white labeled COTS Z-Wave sensors with the security panel just being a hub and interface to the Z-Wave network. The house I moved into this past year is covered by sensors for an old ADT system that are useless to me, and I've been slowly removing them and replacing them with equivalent Z-Wave e.g., door and motion sensors as I get to it. Whenever I move, I'll take the hub with me. Any sensors that get left behind would be almost entirely equivalent to an old security system being left in the house except for the fact that they'd be pairable with any system the new owner decides to put in place since they're actually standards based.
  - mcguire 9y ago
    Do you have any links to information about standards based products? I haven't run across any casually, which is why i haven't looked.
    - commandar 9y ago
      Most whitelabel home automation stuff runs on the Z-Wave protocol. Zigbee is also fairly popular for some applications; it's what e.g., Philips Hue runs on. Devices using either of these will generally pair with any hub with the appropriate radios like Smart Things. There's additionally a class of home automation stuff that runs over WiFi; they more generally have proprietary communication protocols and I personally avoid them for the most part.
  - enobrev 9y ago
    Just as well, if you plan to sign up with ADT, they insist upon new equipment. I just went through this. We bought our house in February. ADT was sending crap almost daily so I called to see what they were offering. They absolutely would not use the 3-year old equipment in the house. Installation would come with new equipment. I didn't care either way, but thought that was notable. No matter; I wasn't interested, and I was happy to get rid of all the their signs and stickers.
- khedoros1 9y ago
  Mostly, I don't care about home automation. I don't care so much about the previous owner removing the components, because I'm sure that I can do it when I move in. Anything that can be set up for remote access is at least being disconnected, if not removed entirely.
- ensignavenger 9y ago
  "if there is anything installed that relies on any sort of sensors" So, no smoke or CO2 alarms in your house?
  - Silhouette 9y ago
    Especially things like those. If you can give me evidence they are properly set up, working, and compliant with all applicable advice and regulations, that's great, I'll be happy to have them. Otherwise, get rid of them, and I'll get my own properly fitted by a suitably qualified professional, thanks. Those things save lives, and I'm not going to cut corners to save a few bucks, only to find that your hack job installer didn't connect them to repeat alarms properly throughout the building, or you used some trendy junk that doesn't actually work reliably if the power goes out, Internet is down, or some other dumb thing that should have nothing at all to do with safety systems ever.
    - ensignavenger 9y ago
      All smoke alarms use sensors, whether or not they are connected to the Internet.
      - Silhouette 9y ago
        No kidding...
hkmurakami 9y ago
There are people like me who actively avoid home automation too. Seeing a nest at an open house is a negative.
- lukejduncan 9y ago
  As a home buyer, why is it a negative? It seems like it would represent such a small % of the purchase price and could be easily included in the negotiation as needing to be removed by the owner before you move in.
  - hkmurakami 9y ago
    Yeah I agree. But I still get a negative psychological reaction since I dislike any and all smarthome products, which colors my impression of the property. Illogical I know, but it's a reality for me and other home buyers / home sellers. It's like staging a home right? None of this furniture comes with the house but how it's staged absolutely influences your impression of the home.
    - andrewem 9y ago
      I get that psychological aspect - it makes you think the current owners have poor judgment, and so what else did they mess up? That's also why you should do simple maintenance and cleaning when trying to sell a house, because if a person neglected to eg rake the leaves, who knows what else was necessary which they didn't do.

jasonkostempski 9y ago

I would consider it to devalue the home. I don't ever want that kind of thing in my house but, even if I did, I'm not going to trust anyone to properly transfer whatever cloud access they have to things in my home, so it will all have to be removed anyway.

heartbreak 9y ago
Who said anything about the cloud? I know what you mean though; if I had to use a cloud service, I definitely wouldn't want it in my house. In my experience it's easier to set this stuff up without the crummy proprietary cloud services anyway.
- leereeves 9y ago
  But even if you do set it up without the cloud services, can you prove that to a buyer who isn't experienced with the technology?
ocdtrekkie 9y ago
If your house uses good standard local communication protocols, like Z-Wave, ZigBee, or Insteon, you can take your cloud devices, and a new owner can just buy a new hub device with their own cloud account and connect the devices to it. Doesn't matter what the other person has in their account at that juncture. That being said, if I was ever to leave home automation hardware behind, it'd be a "if you want to pay x on top of the already agreed upon price for the property, I'll leave it", where x is the cost for me to just buy new modules for my new place.
- pavel_lishin 9y ago
  > you can take your cloud devices, and a new owner can just buy a new hub device with their own cloud account and connect the devices to it. That sounds like a pain in the ass. > if I was ever to leave home automation hardware behind, it'd be a "if you want to pay x on top of the already agreed upon price for the property, I'll leave it I don't want to buy new crap to deal with the crap you left behind. I'd argue that you ought to pay me for dealing with some arbitrary hardware that I've now inherited. This is the equivalent of leaving some finicky boiler system whose spare parts can only be ordered from a single factory in Germany.

ashark 9y ago

We may be listing ours soon, and if we do I'm even swapping the LED bulbs for whatever's cheapest at the store. They're only about a year old and the house will sell for zero more dollars if I leave them up.

pavel_lishin 9y ago
How much are the LED bulbs? I don't think I'd bother taking the time to save fifty bucks on a house move.
- ashark 9y ago
  Heh, it'll be less than 1% of the total time I spend doing touch-ups and such. Maybe three minutes to save, yeah, $50-75. A tiny extra amount of effort on the actual packing and move, but time saved buying new bulbs when the ones in the next house start burning out makes up for that. Besides, I've got most of 'em in in-socket splitters (makes one bulb socked into two) in crappy basement fixtures which I'm pretty sure will make an inspector look twice, so probably worth taking down ahead of time anyway.
  - lucaspiller 9y ago
    Three minutes to change all the bulbs?
    - stronglikedan 9y ago
      Sure, if you have nine people helping you.
    - ashark 9y ago
      A half-dozen lightbulbs, and that long for taking the new ones out of the box and moving the ladder around.
- Zpalmtree 9y ago
  At least in the UK some packs of LED bulbs go up to something like £50 for 3.

thearn4 9y ago

I added z-wave switches to my house, but honestly they function enough like normal switches that I would just leave them if I sold the house (but take the controller with me). I never used any cloud services though.