Selling Your Home? Invest in Smart Tech


Thomas Short
Military VA Loan contributor

When it comes down to it, homeowners looking to sell only want two things: to sell them home quickly and for a lot of money.

There are tons of tricks to helping sell your home quickly, and for a high value. Today’s seller’s market helps, with rising home prices and a huge demand for homes.

Other tricks help as well, like repainting your house or making small renovations.

But what if you’ve already made all the fixes? What else can you do to increase the value of your home?

The answer could be making your home ‘smart.’ Smart homes are starting to become more viable as technology advances and more devices start to connect. While some tech may seem like a gimmick or a fad, other improvements could end up being the final selling point on your home, helping you close the deal.

Here are some of the top tech improvements you can make for your home, as well as tips when looking at making your home smart:

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Front door

There’s plenty of evidence to support that painting your front door a bright color helps sell your home. That’s because your front door is one of the first things prospective home buyers will see. Why not impress them with some tech?

Smart doorbells add security to your home. These doorbells have built in cameras, and when someone rings your doorbell, you’ll be able to see who is outside your door. Many of these connect with your phone, too, so you can get a notification when someone’s at the door even if you aren’t nearby.

Another front door feature to look into is a smart lock. These locks can be unlocked remotely by phones, and multiple phones can be connected to the lock. For houses with kids, this can be safer than giving everyone a key. Combined with the smart doorbell, you can find out who is at your door and unlock the door from them from the other side of your house.

These upgrades aren’t just convenient, but they help keep homes safe, too. Safety is a top priority for most home buyers, so this will impress them.

Security system

Most homes already have a security system, but many of them could use an upgrade.

Because homeowners want a safe house, a smart security system is a good selling point. These systems vary in range and cost, but most give you access to professional monitoring and remote control.

You can also choose to combine your security system with outdoor cameras and motion sensors for extra defense. Smart alarm systems will also let you turn the system on and off whenever you want.

Around the house

Some smart tech increases the value of your home while saving you and the future homeowner money.

Light dimmers aren’t new, but they are huge money savers for electricity. Also, dimmable lights are convenient for entertainment and comfort purposes. Smart light dimmers can be controlled from your phone or tablet.

Smart thermostats can be an even bigger money save. These keep track of when you are and aren’t home, making sure to heat and cool the house at the right times. This saves you money without you even noticing a difference in temperature.

The comfort and cost effectiveness of these products are easy sells, especially for any potential home buyers who are already used to these amenities.

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When in doubt, keep it simple

Tech is fun and cool, and it can make your home easier to sell at a higher price. But just like everything else, tech can be too much of a good thing.

Small changes like smart doorbells or smart thermostats can cost around $200, making them a cost-effective addition. Upgrading your entire home to a smart home can cost much more, though, sometimes well above $10,000. This is going to be much harder to recoup.

It’s also worth keeping some parts of your home tech-free. Not everybody is in love with including tech in every aspect of life, so some home buyers could be turned off because you made too many upgrades.

What to do after you move

Once you’ve sold your home, you need to be sure to reset every device in the home. Not only are you a potential risk to the new homeowner’s security, but leftover data could be getting stored on the devices.

To keep yourself safe, factory reset every device in the home as you move out.

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