5 Ways Smart Multifamily Communities Generate Higher Returns

Over the last year or so, as proptech has exploded, showering the multifamily industry with new and exciting technology, it has become harder to understand the return on technology implementations. As we wrote earlier this year in our 20 for ‘20 white paper, an ever-growing vendor population is competing to deliver ostensibly the same benefits to multifamily communities and companies. To make good decisions, operators have had to sharpen their ability to estimate financial benefits.
The problem gets harder still when a technology offers numerous sources of potential upside. Smart home technology is just such a case, with the combination of access control, thermostats and leak detection providing numerous ways to improve operations and customer experience. The challenge is to identify a credible and measurable source of upside, and figure out whether or not the investment makes sense.     
How to think about smart home tech investments
We recently published new research on smart home technology, where we used insights from individual operators to characterize the different ways that companies are attacking this problem. As we came to understand the differing circumstances and objectives of each of the companies that we interviewed, five different rationales emerged that companies are using to underwrite their smart building investments. We have summarized each below (full details for each case can be found in the white paper):
1. The Win-Win
We recently wrote on this blog about common misconceptions in the way that the industry thinks about smart home technology. One was the misapprehension that smart home tech appeals mo……