Has anyone sold or given thought to how you would sell a house where you have heavily invested in home automation/entertainment.

On one hand, much of it is an add-on, so in theory you could rip it out and use it somewhere else. For me I don't see that happening: too many Insteon/X10 switches for that to be practical.

On the other hand, if its part of the reason your house is attractive, the buyer will expect these things to be part of the house. So what do you do, leave your Mac hooked up running Indigo and say "good luck?"

Thoughts???

When I sell my condo I was going to see what the realtor said.

It's small and I only have a dozen or so Insteon devices hardwired. I have all the old switches so it would take me a couple of hours to swap everything back.

But it might be a nice selling point, minus the Mac Mini. I could program things so it's not so automated as just easier to use (there are no 3 way switches in this place) with Keypads in place.

Most people don't know what HA or Insteon is and probably won't want to mess with it or pay extra for it. If you try to sell the house with it and the buyer wants to have the switches removed, then you will probably have to hire a licensed electrician to put regular switches in.

If you swap them out before you sell then you can forgo the electrician. I say design your system so you can pull stuff prior to selling. Low voltage stuff like speaker wire and CAT5 shouldn't be a problem.

I won't be selling my house for at least another 4 years or so, but I plan on leaving all the Insteon switches (switchlincs and keypadlincs) and I plan on leaving the in-ceiling speakers in the ceiling. However, the 'brains' will be removed.

Insteon switches work just fine without a computer controlling them, so that is no big deal. If they want a computer they can buy one. And for the speakers, I have them all terminated at a box in a downstairs room, so if they want to use them they can buy their own amp from Best Buy and connect it with regular old speaker cable.

Even without Indigo hooking all the various systems together, the switches are still cool. They have those cool little lights on them, they ramp up/down rather then just blasting on/off, etc.

I sold my last house and left the X10 crap in it. I had less than $300 invested in it but it proved to be a good selling point. The new owners were pretty excited to get that setup. It sold in about a week. Go figure.

So fast-forwarding to my new Insteon-enabled house, I can only imagine that the automation could bring a quick sell. I plan on leaving the Mac with the house.

My question is how much can I get back on my investment? I think I have close to $3000 in Insteon devices plus the Mac. Installation and setup has to have value. Did I just increase the value of my home by $5k or so? I would think so!

Is it just me or do other people feel like homes without Insteon switches throughout feel dated? I mean, do people really have to turn on the lights by hand at night or when they wake anymore?

tgriffin wrote:Is it just me or do other people feel like homes without Insteon switches throughout feel dated? I mean, do people really have to turn on the lights by hand at night or when they wake anymore?

Well yes, but on the other hand, some people who visit our house have a really hard time with the wall switches. It doesn't seem hard to me, but I've had my share of "issues." Its really odd to have to tell people how to operate the light switches when they are in the house (press and release, don't hold, don't press too hard, don't press twice, etc.).

It is usually on switches where I have the ramp rate a bit slow. People don't notice that the light *is* turing on or off, so they feel compelled to help the process. On the older X10 SwitchLincs, the air gap switch was activated when you pressed the bottom of the switch hard enough to hear/feel the switch click. Inevitably, people often physically turn off the switch by pressing hard enough to hear a click. On the new SwitchLincs, people trying to get the lights to respond double and triple click which has less than desirable results when a macro is activated.

The worst was when we had a substitute maid. When she was confronted with a KeypadLinc, she apparently decided the best way to handle the confusion was to press every button. On of those buttons is "Away Mode;" it shuts off all of the lights in the house. I was in the shower at the time.

When/if we sell this house, I will remove all X10 stuff. De main reason is because I made all modifications myself. And I'm not willing to take the responsibility for selling a house with modifications that are not made by a real electrician.

I had a bunch of X-10 stuff in my house that I sold 4 years ago. I was planning on pulling it all out but had set up the automation to "show" the house since we were not living there anymore. The buyers thought it was so cool they wrote it into the contract to keep the automation features and I agreed.

Were your 'modifications' only the replacement of existing wall switches with X10-enabled wall switches, or where they more extensive? If all you did was replace a switch then that does not require a licensed electrician nor does it require you to even apply for an electrical renovation permit in most US cities as the national electrical code categorizes that kind of swap as unimportant.

Depends on the code in your city. Where I live, removing the wall plate cover requires a license. Of course, no one does. It's better to take care of all that stuff before it's put on the market.

I've sold the house. My broker advertised it as a "smart home" (his words, not mine). The downside is that they want me to give them a walkthrough of everything in the house and how it works (not just the Insteon stuff, but he music, video distribution, etc.). I get the feeling that this is going to be like the time I recommended a Mac to my father-in-law not knowing that was also signing me up to provide lifetime 24x7 phone support.

I probably won't be in the forum again for a while; at least until I can start sneaking in some Insteon switches into the new house...

No, you just need to make it very clear that:
1) The walkthrough will be 30 minutes max (or 60 minutes, or however long you want to do)

2) They are -not- to contact you ever again. You are not their technical support person, there are plenty of companies that will do this kind of stuff for them.

Hoping to revive this thread to learn more recent home selling experiences.

Seems that HA has become better known over the last several years, with Control4 entering the market through big box distribution and promotion.

Anyone have home selling experience in the last couple years?

Did your Indigo setup attract (or repel) buyers or impact sales time or price?
How did you handle transition of the system to the new owners?
Anyone contract with third party installer / programmer to provide transition & support to the buyers?

Thanks,
mjc

gregjsmith wrote:Depends on the code in your city. Where I live, removing the wall plate cover requires a license. Of course, no one does. It's better to take care of all that stuff before it's put on the market.

Yea, when I did my original X10 automation, I followed the "don'task, don't tell" policy, and although that may have technically violated the city ordinances, I can tell you for a fact that MY work was better than the licensed professional clowns that did the original wiring; I found where they pulled 220 on 12/2 with ground and PAINTED the white wire black on both ends, as well as combining the hots from two different breakers when both came into a common switchbox (garbage disposal and vent hood switches). I'm not planning on selling my house, but if I do, I figure I'll give the prospective buyer the option of keeping my existing system running on one of my older "surplus" macs, setting up his own system to taste, or just thinking of all the keypadlincs as multiway switches.