Forbes is highlighting two instances where smart apartments
are becoming real. First, it looks at utility metering company NWP, which has
helped apartment owners keep a tab on gas, water and electric use in the past.
The firm is now testing certain smart devices, such as locks, thermostats and
automated lighting at some of its clients’ apartments in California to see how
residents respond. CEO Ron Reed tells the magazine installing the smart devices
can help owners save money by being able to turn up or down thermostats when
residents move, or eliminate the need to switch out locks. Meanwhile, Greystar Management is working with tech start up Iotas in Portland to install $900
worth of sensors in some of its apartments. It plans to use data from those
sensors to recommend ways residents can save money on utilities, as well as
market future smart home devices. Seems like two solid steps toward making the
much-talked about possibility of smart apartments a reality sooner rather than
later.
Thursday, August 27, 2015
Thursday, August 20, 2015
A DVR and Apple TV included in the rent? Yes, please!
GlobeSt.com has a great article on the history of the
amenities arms race in student housing, and how it has evolved since the 1990s.
In an interview with Brent Little, president of Dallas-based Fountain Residential
Partners, previewing the RealShare Student Housing Conference in Dallas Sept.
1-2, the real-estate investment pub explores how student digs went from
austere to over-the-top in just a few
decades. Today, we’re at the point where 50-inch flat-screen TVs, DVRs or an
Apple TV box – and often all three – are standard offerings for students,
included in the rent. But the real rub of the article is Little’s assessment of
why these amenities are important, especially in low-barrier-to-entry markets.
Basically, for the cost you put into them, they help you compete in an outsized
way. When you evaluate the cost of technology amenities,
including a robust Internet infrastructure, you’re looking at a very small
percentage of the overall budget of a building – a couple hundred thousand bucks on a
$40 million project, for instance, or less than one half of one percent. That’s
a return even a freshman econ student can understand. Read the full
article here.
Thursday, August 13, 2015
Mediamageddon, NFL Sunday Ticket, and the importance of your apartment building's Internet pipe
Tech guru Shelly Palmer – one of MDU Geek’s favorite
bloggers -- put out an interesting piece this week regarding Mediamageddon.
The term refers to the recent sell off in media stocks, which is presumably
tied to declining traditional TV viewership.
Then, on the heels of AT&T buying DirecTV, the companies
announced
that apartment residents and college students who can’t subscribe, er, directly to DirecTV (in situations where
their building isn’t wired for it, or landlords won’t allow them to have a dish
installed on their balcony) can now buy the flagship NFL Sunday Ticket
programming package a la cart via live stream. To boot, they’re offering
two-tiered pricing – $49.99 a month for four months for apartment residents,
and a “student friendly” price of $24.99 a month for four months for students.
Could the confluence of these events be a sign of things to come? Some
popular pay services – HBO Now comes to mind -- already have paid, direct-to-consumer
streaming choices that cut networks and cable TV subscriptions out of the loop.
For apartment owners, it’s just another indication that the
Internet pipe going into your building is the most important amenity pipe you
have, and may well soon be the only one. That being the case, it’s important to
wire it right, and get the most from it that you can. We’ll be looking at just
that in an upcoming feature, How Much Fiber is Enough, Part 2. In the meantime, check out Part 1, here. Stay tuned!
Thursday, August 06, 2015
What’s on your back-to-school tech list?
The Houston Chronicle has a tech-oriented back-to-school
shopping list for college students: Bluetooth headphones, a Roku or Apple TV
box, and a 5 GHz WiFi router. The headphones are presumably for tuning out your
new roommate as they recount every episode of Game of Thrones they watched on
their Apple TV. But the last item is interesting in the way the article
suggests students use it: to create their own private WiFi network, using the 5
GHz router plugged directly into a wired access point. That way, they won’t
have to compete with other students trying to sign onto the dorm’s general WiFi
router. The lesson for apartment owners? No matter what you install in your
property to connect your residents, some will invariably try to set up their
own little network within the network to leapfrog others, especially if the
access points in your building cause a bottleneck. So next time your wondering
who set up the new WiFi network in your building’s lobby, just look at the guy,
or girl, next door. Read the full article here.
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