The smart apartment has had a slower evolution than traditional single-family smart homes but it looks like the market is on the cusp of a major change. On Thursday, June 28, Alliance Residential Company announced the launch of its “Alliance SmartHome” technology package across more than 25,000 luxury apartments across a $10 billion portfolio that ranges across 19 states and 33 metropolitan markets.
The Alliance SmartHome package has been assembled in partnership with Google and smart home technology platform Dwelo. Specifically, the package means that each designated apartment will include a Google Home Mini, powered by Google Assistant, as well as a Nest Learning Thermostat and a variety of smart locks, light switches, and wall outlets. The entire range of smart home devices will be centrally controlled through the Dwelo cellular-enabled hub, including convenient access for multifamily managers via the Alliance SmartHome dashboard application.
“After two years in development, we are pleased to launch Alliance SmartHome,” Jay Hiemenz, president of Alliance Resident Company, said in a press release. “Home automation in single-family homes has been trending for years now — and our residents desire that same high-tech home system in an apartment. We created Alliance SmartHome to deliver the features our customers want while addressing the unique challenges of multifamily integration to provide a great customer experience and establish a platform for future enhancements in technology.”
Alliance’s technology department, led by Senior Vice President of Technology Scott Pechersky, invested a significant amount of time and resources in assembling a platform and product package that meets the needs and desires of their customers. The company noted Dwelo’s ability to scale and quality of customer support, as well as its acknowledgment that unlike traditional smart home technology, smart technology designed for multifamily apartments needed to include a human solution for implementation and ongoing support.
On that note, residents will be able to reach a support team of Dwelo employees 24/7, while the company’s cloud-based platform will allow it to implement upgrades and fixes on the fly. Alliance also pointed to the ongoing development resources at Google and Nest as additional benefits.
“Dwelo is thrilled to be partnering with a group as respected and innovative as Alliance,” Dwelo CEO Mike Rovito said in a statement. “We are honored by the trust that Alliance is placing in us by selecting us for this rollout. Moreover, our customers have always been our greatest source of new ideas, and at Alliance, we are partnering with a group of forward-thinking people who share our vision for multifamily technology.”
The announcement comes as competition gets increasingly more aggressive in the smart apartment market. Other operators in the growing market include Vivint, offering a service called Smart Properties that lets property managers design their own smart home system, and Entrata, which plans to employ a similar system called SmartProperty across an existing portfolio that includes more than 3.5 million apartment units.