Cellular-Connected IoT Redefines Real Estate Management
Written by: Soracom Team
Published: May 22, 2019
Whether it’s commercial or residential, managing real estate can be a stressful affair involving piles of paperwork, expensive staging, multiple open houses, cumulative upkeep costs, and more.
Among other industries, IoT technology has taken great strides in the real estate sector streamlining processes that were once problematic for property owners and managers.
This is especially the case when these real estate IoT applications are powered with cellular connectivity, which can provide unique benefits that further optimize operational management and efficiency.
Using publicly-shared connectivity types such as WiFi can be impractical for real estate IoT projects, as it often relies on sharing network access with other individuals in the public space.
This would force real estate property owners to depend on another external party’s network to power their IoT project, leaving them vulnerable to failures that are out of their control.
Plus, depending on the size of the real estate property, short-range connectivity types such as WiFi may not have the range necessary to support an expansive IoT project.
Even worse, most real estate properties lack any connectivity whatsoever, forcing individuals to erect their own network infrastructure to support their IoT project.
Cellular, on the other hand, can provide users with flexibility and convenience, allowing them to connect their IoT devices only when necessary, rather than installing a permanent solution.
This enables users to easily transfer IoT devices to different real estate properties without having to rebuild network infrastructure.
Residential Real Estate Simplified with IoT Technology
IoT is ushering in a new era of residential real estate management, allowing property owners to buy, sell and show properties easier than ever before.
In 2014, Opendoor decided to revolutionize the real estate industry with IoT technology by providing a platform that allows them to remotely show and monitor the properties that they purchase from prospective home sellers, joining competitors Zillow and Compass in this fast-paced market.
by providing a platform for property owners to remotely show their home at any time, joining competitors Zillow and Compass in the fast-paced property market.
By empowering each home with intelligent IoT-connected devices, Opendoor enables property hunters to enter any home that they’re interested in via a personal code that is sent to their mobile device.
Once the correct digits are entered, the house’s Opendoor smart lock will disengage, allowing the guests to inspect the home whenever they choose.
Not only does this add heightened convenience to both parties, as it allows sellers to accept a market-clearing price without the hassle of staging a home, fielding multiple offers, paying an agent and more.
Plus, it also simplifies the buying and selling process for property owners that are out of town.
Many of these home-buying services are unable to power their IoT systems with WiFi, as it is often far too expensive to build a WiFi network for each home, considering the data is only being used when prospective buyers are interacting with the smart locks to inspect the home.
Plus, relying on WiFi can make it harder to scale operations (especially on a global level), as a simple network malfunction could prohibit buyers from purchasing the home of their dreams.
For this reason, home-buying services choose to power their expansive IoT project with cellular connectivity, which enables them to deliver heightened convenience to sellers and buyers alike.
Since cellular infrastructure is already established in most countries, these businesses can save on implementing an entire network infrastructure for each property. Plus, if they wish to expand overseas, cellular connectivity allows them to avoid the logistical headache of setting up entire networks in other countries.
IoT Brings Heightened Efficiency to Commercial Real Estate Industry
According to a Deloitte report, IoT sensor deployment in the commercial real estate industry is expected to grow by as much as 78.8% between 2015 and 2020.
IoT has a vital role to play in commercial real estate. In fact, it can be put to use as early as the construction of the commercial property itself, which often requires the input of many individuals from various backgrounds, including electricians, architects, engineers and more.
IoT-connected sensors can display the building’s separate systems as one cohesive network that can be viewed on a dashboard.
From HVAC to lighting, each component of the property can be easily tracked and monitored by the commercial property manager and whoever else requires access, allowing stakeholders to stay one step ahead of any last minute changes or surprise equipment failures.
In addition, IoT can drastically improve the efficiency of a commercial property in a variety of different ways.
By deploying IoT-connected sensors that detect human presence, property managers can determine when utilities are required and when they can be turned off to save power.
Plus, IoT sensors can be used to detect drastic temperature changes, which can negatively affect tenant comfort as well as equipment life.
Naturally, smart buildings that possess this capability are attractive to virtually any tenant. Understanding that the property hosting your store – whether it’s a mall, university or airport – is operating in an efficient manner with each component carefully monitored can be reassuring.
Plus, the building data that is collected by the IoT sensors can be used to potentially optimize your own operations.
Whether its tracking foot traffic, streamlining resource usage or monitoring occupancy levels per area, or temperature changes, IoT-enabled properties can provide tons of additional value to commercial property tenants that are selling products and services.
Optimizing HVAC Efficiency with IoT
Enerbrain harnesses disruptive IoT technology to develop a cloud-driven set of technologies that effectively reduce the costs associated with managing the heating, cooling and air ventilation of real estate properties.
With multiple commercial use cases, Enerbrain’s new HVAC solution allows property managers to simultaneously improve resource efficiency and tenant comfort.
By developing an intuitive and retrofit solution that can be installed in seconds, Enerbrain has ensured that its IoT-powered devices can be easily and rapidly applied in any building.
While Enerbrain’s Energy Cloud solution has received rave reviews from businesses across Europe, they noticed that it was difficult to manage the data growth in different markets.
To fix this, Enerbrain decided to power their IoT project with Soracom cellular connectivity. Each IoT-connected device and sensor was paired with a SORACOM Air SIM card, functional in over 120 countries around the globe.
They sent data from each device to the cloud using SORACOM Beam to drastically reduce the power and data needs for each device by offsetting encryption so that devices could transfer data without relay servers or SDKs.
Enerbrain chose to secure their data with a SORACOM Canal private connection, which allows data to flow from device to cloud without traveling on the public Internet.
In addition, Enerbrain built a private LAN between their devices using SORACOM Gate to ensure secure bi-directional communication that doesn’t require a global IP address for each device.
Plus, with SORACOM Funnel, the data collected by Enerbrain’s IoT-powered devices can be transferred directly to the cloud, lowering the power and data usage associated with storing passwords while improving the efficiency and convenience of performing device maintenance.
With an army of IoT sensors collecting information from different areas of the property, Enerbrain needed a simple and effective way to visualize the insights they collected.
They chose SORACOM Harvest, which can create real-time information reports and GPS visualizations to track and monitor device usage and up-time.
Lubn Secures Properties with IoT Smart Lock Box
Real estate technology startup Lubn used IoT technology technology to engineer the world’s first cellular-powered smart key lock box, providing users with complete control over property management.
Each one of these IoT-connected devices features an embedded camera that records who is trying to access the property in question. To disengage Lubn’s cellular-powered smart key lock box, users must place the correct QR code under the lock’s scanner.
Whether you’re a property manager, service provider, tenant or Airbnb host, Lubn’s smart key lock box keeps your assets safe using two-layer encryption and SSL connection. Plus, if there’s any sign that the lock is being tampered with, the smart key lockbox’s manager will be immediately notified.
Lubn’s innovative breakthrough allows users to stay connected with their property from anywhere in the world via cellular connectivity. Plus, it’s easy to carry to another location in the event that a property sells.
For Lubn, Soracom cellular connectivity was the clear choice to power their IoT project. Firstly, their business was inherently mobile-centric, making it especially convenient to link their IoT devices with the same cellular connectivity that drives their users’ mobile devices.
Plus, Lubn didn’t require consistent data transfers that could warrant a different connectivity type. Instead, data is used sparsely depending on whether or not a user is trying to access a property.
As a result, finding a connectivity solution that limited the upfront cost for network infrastructure made the most sense.
Unlike most cellular providers, Soracom only charges for the data this is used, allowing businesses to cut unnecessary costs and further streamline their IoT operations.
Lastly, Lubn’s devices wouldn’t necessarily have access to the home’s local WiFi connectivity, making it unnecessarily dependent on the infrastructure of another stakeholder.
By trusting in Soracom cellular connectivity, Lubn doesn’t have to worry about finding reliable connectivity for its smart key lock box devices.
Power your Real Estate IoT Project with Soracom
Real estate – whether its commercial or residential – has plenty to gain from IoT technology, especially when its powered with the right connectivity.
Whether its comprehensive analytics or intuitive installations, more than 10,000 businesses around the world trust Soracom as their IoT cellular solution.
That’s because we take IoT projects to the next level with heightened reliability, convenience and efficiency at a cost-effective rate, providing value that you can’t find anywhere else.
Plus, our state-of-the-art technology ensures complete safety and security for your data as it travels from your devices to the cloud, saving you from worrying about your business.
Book a demo today and discover the value of Soracom cellular connectivity.
