A New Development in Florida is Building Alexa Right into New Homes

A new development in Florida is building Alexa right into its homes

By Lulu Chang February 20, 2018

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The selling point of the homes of the 21st century won’t be their granite countertops or their built-in entertainment centers or even their in-ground pools — rather, it will be about the Alexa integration. At least, that seems to be the hope of a Miami-based homebuilder, Lennar, which recently broke ground for construction of 385 houses in Royal Palm Beach. What make these homes special? The fact that all of them will come equipped with Amazon’s Alexa. So don’t worry about bringing your Amazon Echo to your new home — Alexa will have already moved in.

Lennar partnered with Amazon to bring the virtual assistant to this new housing development, Bellasera. The homebuilder has had big plans for the development for quite some time — it originally bought the 154-acre development site in 2015 for $35 million. The gated community will feature luxury houses with prices beginning in the low $400,000s.

In addition to having Alexa built into the homes, Dan Grosswald, president of Lennar’s Palm Atlantic Division, also noted that Bellasera “will be our first completely Wi-Fi certified community.” That means that there will be no dead spots to speak of in the entire neighborhood and that Alexa will never go offline (think of that what you will).

The housing development is also expected to boast a clubhouse with a gym, swimming pool, and playground. And of course, there will be basketball and tennis courts, too, because what kind of luxury community would it be otherwise?

Houses will be available in both one- and two-story designs, and will feature between three and five bedrooms and two to five and a half bathrooms. Garages will be able to accommodate up to three cars, and of course, you’ll be able to control all of the homes’ am-entities throughout these various rooms with your voice.

Thus far, the Amazon Alexa partnership appears to be a major selling point for the houses. “We can see a marked difference where [Alexa] is part of the home, there is more of an interest in buying,” Grosswald noted. “The target buyer here … is a person that is more in tune with technology and energy efficiency. We want to anticipate those needs and meet those needs.”

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