Smart refrigerators, washers and dryers are the least popular forms of smart home technology,according to a recent study.
People want smart homes, but are demanding smart security and smart temperature over other forms of home IoT, including that integrated in traditional IoT appliances.
Fifty-eight percent of respondents to Coldwell Banker’s sponsored survey said they want to see smart security pre-installed in homes, and 56% like the idea of smart temperature.
Coldwell Banker is a real estate brokerage franchiser. Harris Poll conducted the study among over 4,000 adults.
‘Smart-stage’
“Homeowners are willing to pay extra to ‘smart stage’ their home,” the real estate agency said in a press release about the study.
To clarify, smart stage in this context means to incorporate smart technology, as opposed to 3D rendering of furniture to stage an empty room for sale. That’s also called ‘smart-staging.’
Selling homes
More than half of the respondents reckon it’s worth “installing smart home products if they were selling their home and knew that doing so would make it sell faster,” the survey says.
The survey doesn’t explain how or why the respondents would know that the installation of the equipment would make the home sell faster.
However, it does probably indicate a general inquisitiveness or sense of perceived worth in the tech. Of those who don’t own any smart home tech, about a quarter (27%) indicated that “they will” make it a part of their lives in 2016.
And close to half (45%) currently “own smart home technology or plan to invest in it in 2016,” the survey says it found.
Not necessarily tech-savvy
Interestingly, the survey found that many of the respondents don’t consider themselves overly techy, indicating that the tech might be breaching the geek-barrier.
“Of people who either have smart home technology or plan to buy it in 2016, more than one in three (36%) don’t consider themselves early adopters of technology,” the report says.
That could mean it’s headed mainstream.
Other surveys
Coldwell Banker’s October-conducted survey isn’t the only one that’s been bullish on home IoT. Late last year, Adobe Digital Trends also came up with optimistic numbers, finding social media users liked home IoT devices, in particular smoke detectors and thermostats.
I wrote about that report in “2016 predictions: Home IoT, digital personal assistants to take off?“
As found in the Adobe survey, Coldwell Banker’s consumers like the stuff. A massive 70% of the Coldwell Banker respondents said that buying their first product made them more likely to buy another one.
Consumer Electronics Show
It’s also worth noting that CES, the 3,600 exhibitor consumer electronics trade showopening in Las Vegas on Wednesday, will feature home IoT products prominently.
Although clearly the mere presence at a trade show doesn’t indicate a genre’s consumer acceptance, the numbers in these two surveys do appear to indicate a general perceived value in the home IoT market.