I'll be putting my house on the market in March 2026 and buying a new house with my girlfriend around the same time.
Right now I have a C5 hub that has a couple of zwave devices connected. Specifically, two Zooz ZSE40s that use the older zwave 500 chipset. When the C7 came out, it was identified that having these on your network would cause instability to the whole network. There have been some zwave firmware updates on the C7 since then with substantial improvements, but I don't know if they fixed the issue that device specifically had. Maybe @jtp10181 knows since he works on a lot of Zooz drivers.
My main hub is a C7. It has 56 zwave devices connected. Most of these are zwave 700 devices, but I have a decent number of zwave 500 devices too. I don't really know the easiest way to see the breakdown. They are almost entirely Zooz products and it doesn't help that they sometimes use the same model name and just update the hardware revision version. I'm pretty sure out of my five Zen30s, two are 500, two are 700, and one is 800 series.
So general questions for anyone that's done this:
Should I bother trying to keep any of my automations? I mean, some of them will be the same, but I have no idea where a device currently in one place will end up in the new house. I'd probably end up doing a whole bunch of zwave replace. It almost seems like a better idea to maybe screenshot anything substantial and just start over with a clean slate.
As I am disconnecting devices and replacing them with regular switches... should I exclude and factory reset them?
I've read that the thought process of never include with security unless it's something like a lock is outdated. If I start over, should I add everything as S2? What about zwave 500 devices that only support S0? Is there still no way to include them with no security?
Thinking about replacing both hubs with a C8 Pro. Would give me the option to use ZW LR devices if I want. Also supports the newer zwaveJS. Better range with the external antennae. Plus would simplify things by only having 1 hub. I'd probably keep the C7 around as a spare (though... I don't know if a backup from a C8 Pro with zwavejs can even be restored onto a C7).
Now that I've typed all that out, I'm kinda thinking "Oh, I guess I didn't really have many questions." So I guess what I'm really saying is that I like going into things with a plan and I'm just wondering how other Hubitat users have handled moving to a new home with all their devices.
If these are mostly switches my guess is that they work as a normal switch when Hubitat is off. If that is the case I would just leave them which is what I did with a few first generation z-wave Leviton switches when I moved a few years ago. As for the rest. It seems like reset and start with a clean slate would be cleaner than trying to solve the problems of trying to get previously paired devices in the right places and integrated into new automations.
I moved 10 months ago.
I use webCoRE for automating my devices which I backed up.
I then gradually removed all my devices by factory resetting and removing them. These had a split of about 70 zigbee and 15 zwave.
It was strange having to flick switches etc. on and off in the previous week before we moved!!
In the new property I gradually introduced my smart switches, contact and motion sensors etc. on a room by room basis as and when I had time.
It was fairly straight forward. Pair the devices and then restore my WC piston from my backup. (Put in the devices when restoring the piston). Boom, things were working again. I did have to tweak the pistons but not much work.
I did notice that I didn't do as much automation, as in the early days I went over the top and didn't really need some of the automations.
BTW I took my existing C7 and C8 hubs with me and did a software reset and started from scratch.
Not sure if this helps you but it worked for me.
I have sold three homes that had extensive home automation prior to the sale. For the first two, I did everything possible to make the system easy to understand and use, and the new owner (well, the guy, at least) was interested in learning to use the system. I left the hub (not Hubitat back then) but ended up having to provide hours and hours of support. Nothing broke and the conversations were very pleasant and friendly - there was just a lot of learning that had to occur. It all worked out but it was a lot of work.
For the last home, I yanked out ALL automation before we put it on the market. That was soooo much easier.
So, my advice: Yank it all before you put it on the market.
Couldn't you leave the hard-wired switches, and remove any sensors?
They'd just act as normal switches and you'd save yourself a lot of work.
Start fresh on the new place-maybe a C9 will be out by then, lol.
Do ZW LR everywhere.
All I can tell you is this: if you intend to keep you smart home gear, make sure you remove it BEFORE you put you let any potential buyers into your home. The general rule with installed equipment is if it's in the house when a buyer enters, it must be sold with the house and you can't take it with you.
I think that's fair for hardwired devices. (in wall switches, dimmers, T-Stats), etc.
To me, that doesn't seem to fit for either plug in devices (dimmers, air sensors or filters), or even smart bulbs (unless you make a point of showing such bulbs off to a buyer, colors, animations, etc.)
It was more of an issue with the default configuration. I have had 3 of them running a C7 and now a C8 no issues. Use my driver to access all the settings. Also might depends on what firmware yours have. The newest 32.x firmware Zooz took away the every 7 seconds active report during active motion. Cuts down a lot of traffic if its a busy area.
