Smart Home Products Are U.S. Consumers’ Favorite Tech Trend—But Many Feel Left Out Because of High Prices, New Survey Shows

Quext study highlights consumer enthusiasm, reveals a desire for greater access to smart home technology.

Smart home technology is all the rage, with more U.S. consumers saying they are more “excited” about smart home products than artificial intelligence, 5G, or the metaverse. But many consumers still can’t afford to buy these products—creating an opportunity for multifamily housing owners and operators to fulfill this need by making them more widely available to apartment dwellers.

The 2023 Quext Survey: Smart Technology Trends was conducted for Quext, a leading technology company for the multifamily industry, by the third-party survey platform Pollfish. Key findings include:

• Respondents were asked which new technologies they were most excited about. The top choice was "smart home devices" (58%), followed by "artificial intelligence" (51%), "5G cellular technology" (45%), "green/eco-friendly technologies" (32%), "robotics" (22%), and the "metaverse" (20%).

• Among smart home products, smart speakers like Amazon Alexa were the most popular category, with 57% of respondents saying they currently have one in their residence. Most categories, however, such as smart thermostats and smart kitchen appliances, were used by fewer than a third of respondents. For less-affluent respondents ($50,000 annual household income and below), adoption rates plummeted.

• Apartment dwellers in the survey sample were asked whether smart home technologies should be a “luxury” or “standard” feature in multifamily housing. While most higher-income respondents ($125,000+ annual household income) said it should be a luxury feature, more respondents overall believed it should be standard.

• Among high-income apartment dwellers ($150,000+ annual household income), 27% cited smart home products as their most important amenity, topping other perks like covered parking and gated entry. Among less-affluent apartment dwellers ($50,000 annual income and below), only 9% cited smart home products, likely due to their relative scarcity in more affordable multifamily housing.

• Among apartment dwellers paying monthly rent of $2,000 or less, 22% said they had access to smart home technologies, compared to 32% of those paying more than $2,000 per month in rent. Among those paying less than $1,000 per month, only 12% had access to these technologies.

• When asked about new technologies such as smart home products, 62% of respondents said that price is the biggest barrier to adoption, with 49% saying they expect the price of most new technologies to come down within the next year.

“Even with all the attention the media has given to ChatGPT and other AI tools recently, most consumers are still more excited about smart home technology—they just wish it were more accessible,” said Dave Gilles, CEO of Quext. “Multifamily property owners and operators can get ahead of this trend by making smart apartment technology more widely available. It’s an investment in resident satisfaction—and in the future.”

Visit the 2023 Quext Survey: Smart Technology Trends at Quext’s website for the complete results.

About Quext

Quext is a smart technology and services company pioneering exciting innovations that make smarter decisions brilliantly simple. Created by industry experts, Quext reimagined apartment technology with products that work seamlessly together delivering the easiest-to-learn, most intuitive, all-in-one, cloud-based apartment community nerve center ever offered. Core platform innovations include internet of things, digital human customer support, broadband internet, and fintech solutions. Quext is a people-centric firm founded by Madera Residential, an industry leader in multifamily housing investment and property management. Headquartered in Lubbock, TX, the company was recognized as a winner of the Fierce Wireless IoT Challenge 2020. To learn more, visit onequext.com/ or follow us on LinkedIn at linkedin.com/company/onequext.

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