How Can I as a Landlord Offer a Smart Rental Apartment?

For many homeowners, the smart home is already part of everyday life. For example, heating that adjusts according to presence and the current weather saves many owners enormous energy costs, and smart lighting creates a level of comfort that many people would never want to do without again.

But why does it look so different on the rental market? For tenants, the smart home today consists at most of some Amazon Alexa or Google Home actuators that tenants buy themselves in retail stores and retrofit without interfering with the electrical system. However, the added value of these solutions is limited and still falls far short of the benefits, convenience, and energy-saving potential of a “real” smart home installation.

Smart Home – Task of the Tenant or Task of the Landlord?

50% of all Germans live in rented apartments. This means that around half of Germans live in third-party property on a temporary basis. In essence, it is not the tenant's task to expand or improve the third-party property. This is understandable because hardly any tenant is interested in investing in installation and actuators for a rented property, which after moving out will exclusively benefit the landlord.

It should also be borne in mind that the tenant is usually not allowed to modify the electrical system. Although tenants have a substantial interest in the smart home and, according to a Deloitte study, are willing to pay for it, virtually no German tenant lives in a smart rental apartment. But why is that actually the case?

The Price Question

For landlords, it has simply not paid off to rent out a smart rental apartment until now. Whether in a new building or for a retrofit, the costs have been too high to date, which is why a smart home has only been considered for luxury properties.

Costs in the mid to high six-figure range were not primarily due to the “intelligent actuators” but rather the complexity of the overall system. Starting with the costly wiring of all actuators, to a central server in the apartment or even the basement, and the associated complex setup and programming of the entire smart home system – the costs quickly added up.

Bluetooth Mesh for the Cost-Effective Smart Rental Apartment

The times when a smart home installation quickly costs €50,000 are slowly but surely over. With the advent of new technologies such as Bluetooth Mesh, smart home solutions can also be implemented inexpensively and easily for rental apartments.

While Bluetooth saves the cost of wiring in new construction, Bluetooth as an everyday wireless technology makes retrofitting in old buildings possible in the first place – without having to laboriously break open walls.

Bluetooth Mesh also requires no central servers or gateways, and even internet is optional. Through mesh networking, every switch, every actuator, every sensor is directly connected to each other. All nodes forward all information to the respective device.

Bluetooth is already integrated in every smartphone. This way, common smart home automations can be programmed within a few minutes via a user-friendly app like the MESHLE App – without any expert.

Good Reasons

For landlords, investing in smart rental apartments opens up many opportunities. On the one hand, the attractiveness of the entire property can be increased and, if necessary, one or the other shortcoming of an apartment can be compensated. Additionally, according to a Deloitte survey, people interested in smart homes are willing to pay 30 euros more per month for an apartment that already has a smart home solution preinstalled.

In current times, however, one factor is becoming more important than ever: energy savings. By installing intelligent heating controls, thermostats, and smart lighting, energy costs can be significantly reduced – and this will likely remain the most important concern in the future, not just for tenants.

The Steps to a Smart Home

The most important thing is to find a consultant or a company that is technology neutral and knows the benefits of wireless solutions. Unjustifiably, electricians today still advise in the direction of wired smart home solutions with BUS systems without good reason. However, these complex BUS systems are the primary reason why the smart rental apartment has not yet become established.

To realize a smart rental apartment that is as cost-effective as possible, it is essential to rely on a radio-based system. If you also want it to work completely offline, without the internet and without complex installation, Bluetooth Mesh is a particularly suitable wireless technology.

The good thing is that more and more manufacturers are also relying on Bluetooth Mesh for their smart product lines. Slow but sure standardization is also opening up the manufacturers, and Bluetooth Mesh products will all be compatible with each other in the future.