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4 Considerations Before Using Smart Home Devices for Apartments

August 1, 2024 • Shannon Flynn

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Smart home devices for apartments could make your life easier, but there are some important considerations to review before deciding to use them. Let’s go over them now so you can make informed decisions about whether to use these products.

1. Do the Products Support Multiple Properties or Users?

Many people live in multiple apartments throughout their lives. If you plan on doing the same, focus on smart home devices that will move with you, such as plugs or light bulbs. 

On the other end of the spectrum are property owners who may get new tenants every year or more often. How easy is it for them to add more people as the occupancy changes? 

Consider the increasingly popular investment opportunities that involve people purchasing apartments and renting them out to short-term visitors. Smart home devices give owners more control over those arrangements, such as allowing them to ensure tenants’ actions won’t result in sky-high utility bills. 

One example came from a couple who own three vacation rentals. One of the first guests in a property left the air conditioner on a cool, high setting in August. It stayed that way for a couple of weeks, only noticed by the cleaners who came to prepare the property for the next guests,  causing an unpleasant surprise when the owners received that month’s utility bill. They learned a lesson, though, deciding to install smart thermostats in their properties after that experience. 

Now, they can adjust the thermostats remotely and schedule their operation. That means even if guests change the temperature manually, the gadgets will still return to the owners’ preset temperatures at specified times. 

Don’t assume you can easily change settings to make smart home devices for apartments work in multiple places. If the manufacturer’s product information does not explicitly state that, consider contacting someone at the company to verify you can do that. 

2. Do Smart Home Devices for Apartments Align With Your Lease?

Any apartment dwellers thinking about purchasing some smart home devices should begin by reviewing their leases. Although the content of those documents varies, most don’t allow tenants to make changes that become permanent modifications, such as drilled holes. 

The wisest thing to do may be to focus on products you can definitely take with you when moving to a new place. Streaming sticks for your TV — which you can buy for $40 or less — are excellent examples of smart devices you can take wherever you go. They won’t break your lease, either. 

Fortunately, there is a large and growing assortment of apartment and renter-friendly smart home products to consider. As you become acquainted with the offerings, consider which items would improve your life or otherwise become things you’re genuinely glad you purchased. 

If any of your friends or other trustworthy people in your life are also apartment tenants, ask them if they have any smart home products they love. Then, scrutinize your lease to ensure those products would be above board according to the rules. 

One smart home panel released in 2023 is ideal among smart home devices for apartments because it requires no wiring. Instead, setting it up is as easy as plugging the gadget into a wall outlet. Another major perk is that the product supports thousands of devices from brands such as Samsung, Ring and Apple. 

3. Do You Accept the Privacy Trade Offs? 

Even people who generally like living in apartments often mention that they don’t like being able to hear other tenants through the walls or ceilings. Indeed, such living situations are usually less private than single-family homes. Smart home devices could erode privacy even more. 

In 2022, news broke of smart vacuum cleaners that recorded sensitive images of people at home, and then sent the data to the cloud. Contractors labeled the items in each shot, reportedly to help the robot vacuum’s manufacturer train its artificial intelligence algorithms. The company eventually responded, saying everyone who’d received those gadgets signed agreements acknowledging the data usage and transfer details. 

However, as you probably know from personal experience, most people gloss over such legal details, hurriedly adding their signatures to the dotted lines. Only you can decide how you feel about a robot vacuum that takes pictures of your home and moves the snapshots to the cloud. 

Think about how easily others might be able to hear details you’d rather keep private, too. Smart speakers give good examples of this. Imagine if you had yours near a thin, shared wall and used it to check your bank account balance or transfer money. While that scenario might not represent a security risk, it could tell your neighbor more than you’d like to share about your circumstances. 

4. Do You Understand Cybersecurity Best Practices? 

Although people may perceive smart home devices for apartments differently than laptops, both categories are internet-connected products that hackers could exploit. That means you must follow some basic best practices to keep yourself safe and your network secure. 

Begin by keeping the device’s software updated, including by activating an automatic installation feature, if available. Then, you’ll get everything as it becomes available and won’t need to manually check for those releases. Another simple but effective thing to do is change the device’s default password, if it comes with one. 

Manufacturers in the United Kingdom can no longer include them on their devices. However, that rule has yet to become more widespread, putting the responsibility on the consumer to change default passwords to more unique ones. 

Keep in mind that you should change passwords more regularly, too. Consider if you give a maintenance person the details for your smart lock so they can get inside to do a repair while you’re at work. The ideal thing to do is deactivate or delete the password after they use it, depending on how the smart device’s security features work. 

Although smart device hacks are relatively rare, they have happened. Some cybersecurity analysts also believe these incidents will become more common with the increasing availability of the 5G network, which expands the attack surface for cybercriminals to target. 

Will You Use Smart Home Devices for Apartments? 

The above areas of discussion highlight how smart home devices for apartments can make life more enjoyable by making some tasks easier. However, they’re not the best options for every situation. Thinking about the questions here will help you reach confident decisions about whether to purchase some and how to use them. 

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