Why We’re Excited About Rent Tech
Over the past few years, real estate technology has matured significantly. This has caused a major shift in preferences and demands from residents, and the multifamily housing industry as a whole. Thousands of property owners that own more than 40 million apartments are currently undergoing a tech transformation, and smart apartment technology is quickly becoming a must-have amenity for multifamily and single-family rental operators. Residents, along with both property owners and managers, crave technology that makes the apartment experience more efficient, automated, and enjoyable from initial resident interest all the way through move-out.
Prior to the New Year, we announced RET Ventures’ investment of $5 million in the smart apartment automation platform, SmartRent. Our investment is helping to fuel the company’s accelerated growth and large-scale national deployments, increasing its current 15-state footprint to over 40 states. In thoroughly evaluating the smart apartment space, RET Ventures and our LP group saw SmartRent emerge as a consistent outperformer across every key metric, and their platform offering has proven so impressive that nearly all of our limited partners are in some stage of discussion with the company for pilots or broader national deployments.
Here are a few reasons why we are so excited to be a part of the SmartRent story:
Resident Friendly
Technology is ubiquitous within our society and residents now demand a fully integrated experience in every facet of their lives, especially at home. From enabling prospective residents to conduct secure self-showings of available units, to empowering current residents to remotely control the climate, lighting, and access of their current unit, SmartRent’s automated platform provides a comprehensive and seamless experience for current and potential residents. As automation and self-service continue to be major trends in the multifamily industry, the SmartRent platform will provide lasting value to residents for years to come.
Optimized Operations
By combining connected devices with its web and mobile platform, SmartRent can help identify leaks or faulty equipment, eliminate energy waste, and provide remote access control for door locks. These functions are especially valuable when managing vacant units, where leaks or needless energy consumption can often go unnoticed and lead to unnecessary costs.
Overall, SmartRent’s platform is an efficient and secure way to automate maintenance and other responsibilities of the property while driving down expenses and long-term operating costs.
Easy and Flexible Deployment
The SmartRent platform is flexible and easy to implement in any rental property type at any stage, including ground-up developments, retrofits, high-rises, garden style properties, and more. SmartRent offers a complete turnkey deployment service, including equipment specification/ordering, device installation/pairing and resident /staff onboarding.
Industry Pedigree
SmartRent is the brainchild of accomplished real estate industry veterans. This, combined with the clear benefits of the platform, are some of the main differentiators of the company and reasons why we chose to invest.
SmartRent has incredible momentum as it completed over 14,500 installations in 2018 and already has an additional 50,000 apartments committed for 2019. We look forward to continuing to play a role in the company’s growth as it leads the multi-family industry in safely, securely, and profitably embracing technology to automate multi-dwelling units.
