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Sunday, December 30, 2018

Alexa, get my house ready for buyers

If 2019 is the year to sell your house or condo, let an Amazon Alexa help you out a bit.

Just because your house was built back in the dark ages, before wireless internet, Bluetooth technology, and smartphones, you can still turn your house into a smart house, with a small monetary investment, and take some of the stress out of selling.

Here’s what I’d recommend to home sellers.

Purchase a smart speaker. If you’re going with Alexa (like I did), then you should consider getting an Echo, Echo Plus, or Echo Dot from Amazon. If you go with Google, there’s the Google Home and the Google Home Mini, while Apple offers the HomePod.

Then get the app on your smartphone.

Set the speaker up according to the very easy instructions that come with it. Alexa will even walk you through it.

Now you can turn on soft classical music from your phone when you get that call saying someone wants to show your house. And you can turn it off after they leave, which you will know because you already have a video doorbell and can see when they got there and when they left.

But if you don’t already have a video doorbell, you’ll need to get that, too. Make sure to get the one that’s compatible with your system (for example, Ring is owned by Amazon and Nest Hello is owned by Google.)

Next, you need a handful of smart light bulbs that work with your smart system.

Once you replace several of your ordinary light bulbs with smart bulbs, you can turn on and off specific lights or groups of lights using voice commands like, “Alexa, turn on the living room lights.”

I recommend getting smart bulbs for the living room, family room, master bedroom, and the kids’ rooms as well. That way, when you get a call for a home showing, you can have Alexa turn on all the lights from the app on your phone, from wherever you happen to be at the time. No longer do you have to remember to leave all the lights on when you leave, or ask the agent showing your house to turn all the lights off when they leave.

Just ask Alexa to do it for you.

If your budget allows, you might also replace your thermostat with a smart thermostat that is – you got it – compatible with the system you’re using. That way you can also adjust the temperature of your house, even when you’re away from home.

There’s an even more cost-effective way to make your house a smart house: Smart plugs. With smart plugs, you can add other devices you can control from your smartphone or tablet app, and you don’t even need the hub.

Any outlet in your house can become a smart outlet. You can use smart plugs to control lights, CD players, or your electric scented wax burners, which cost about $10 each.

Now you can set your house up for unexpected buyers at the last minute, and you never again have to remember leave the house the way you’d want buyers to see it before you left for work, the gym, or to return Christmas presents.

But you do still need to make the beds and put away the dishes. Alexa can’t do that. Yet.

Leslie Sargent Eskildsen is an agent with Realty One Group. She can be reached at 949-678-3373 or leslie@leslieeskildsen.com.

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