Selling home and leaving smarts

I’m selling my home and will leave all the smart switches, door sensors, and motion sensors. Everything is Zwave Plus and controlled by two C8 pro hubs. I have some Hue stuff too but will take that with me. I would love to take one of the hubs but don’t feel like re pairing things to one hub. I saw an old thread that suggested registering under a new house email which sounds like a good idea, but that was three years ago, so I’m wondering if there’s any newer advice or any new tools available on the platform for transferring a home to a new person.

I would take anything not "installed." I would leave only smart switches in the wall boxes, thermostats, locks, and doorbell cams. I would not leave hubs or battery powered devices at all.

Main thing is to get rid of things you don't want to sell before showing the house.

If the person buying is into smart home stuff, they probably want to use their own choice of hubs, unless they happen to be a Hubitat user already, which seems slim. If you leave your hubs, there is probably a good chance they will just be sold on Ebay so they can use what they are used to.

If the person buying is not into smart home stuff, they will never use the hubs you leave anyway, and they will probably get sold or thrown out. They might even find the smart switches annoying, if they want regular physical dimmers.

You can leave it all, but if the buyer doesn't want them, it may become a condition of sale for you to get rid of them. It may or may not increase sale value, it really depends if the buyer wants them or not. Hobbyist hubs like Hubitat certainly don't give the same value as a professional system.

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Agree with @chrisbvt 100%. I am nowhere near ready to sell my home, but when I do and before the house is put on the market, the plan is to replace my Ecobee thermostats with some cheap dumb thermostats, replace my UniFi G4 doorbell with a standard doorbell button and remove things like my HE hub, Hue bridge, etc. so they can all be taken with me.

When we sold our place I yanked everything. Everyone is different but my realtor told me leaving the stuff wouldn't help sell the house and may actually be a deterrent.

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If you are not under contract I would replace all of it with dumb switches and bulbs. We have discussed this scenario a few times in the forum.

The reasons are many, but simplicity for a real estate agent and traditional buyers that could be put off dby anything they don't understand is key.

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Sounds like a lot of work. I am not ready to sell my house but when I do I will probably leave the smart switches in the wall boxes as @chrisbvt suggests. They are paddle style so they look like dumb switches. The only way you know they are smart switches is the small leds. Replacing them all would be a lot of work/cost. I will probably remove all other smart devices as suggested by others.

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As you like. Not sure why it needed posting though.

I was going to make a similar comment. Leave what works as a "normal" device and remove the rest. Exactly what I did when we sold several years ago. I left two Ecobees and registered them to a new Gmail address for the house. It was a 150 yr old rambling farm house with separate heating systems in different areas. The Ecobees with sensors worked pretty well at keeping it comfortable.

I appreciate all the responses. Making me rethink my strategy. I also agree that the wired in switches can just stay because they work close enough to a regular switch. My realtor didn't ask me to remove the smart home stuff, but after I share the logic here I'm sure he will agree to remove it.

After hearing this feedback, my new plan is to take both HE hubs, all my battery operated sensors. The Nest was there when I bought the home and I don't love Nest anyway, so I'll leave that. I'm still deciding what to do about the Ring doorbells and my Ring alarm system and keypad... but leaning toward taking them.

Many thanks again.

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Sold our house 4 years ago. Made it smart for the new owners. Very easy to use Lutron/Hue/Hubitat system. No weird sensors anywhere. Very clean if I don’t say so myself. Two years later, old neighbours told me they got divorced and she ripped it all out and threw it in the garbage.

Take it all with you. It does nothing for resale. You’re just going to have to buy it all again, unless you don’t want it to begin with.

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Yeah I was thinking the same, and any you had done any special re-wiring on (like eliminating the load for any reason) make sure it goes back to functional with no hub. Could just make a little packet to hand off to the new owners with info about what is installed. They can decide if they want to get some sort of hub and hook it all up, if not it would work as-is like normal switches.

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That hurts… What a waste!!!

:slight_smile:

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:point_up:t2:

Do what you want.

... And that is advantageous to you when selling.

But seriously... good question to ask... it can change over time and peoples opinions change...

lowest waf possible lol

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We recently sold our old place and I have a comment about the “house” email.

I created a house gmail account based on previous comment I read here and thought it was a great idea. But transferring that Gmail account to the new owner was not a simple as I had hoped it would be. I gave the email and password and ignorant thought he could just go in and change it on his own. But of course Google flagged it as a security breach and blocked his access. We needed to be online together and recovery emails as well as phone numbers had to be updated etc.

I should not have been surprised by any of this but I was. It’s just difficult to have a house email that is generic enough to hand off with just a password.

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Maybe hubby got engrossed with playing with the house and she resented it :wink:

She resent it alright, right to the dump. :slight_smile:

They said she threw him to the curb old school. Golf clubs were on the sidewalk too.

I had a bad impression of her from the first meeting after they signed the deal.

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Impressions can change... :wink: Says the single guy...