Earlier this month, Lennar unveiled Enclave at Estancia in Austin, Texas, one of the first in its communities of Wi-Fi CERTIFIED homes.
Last June, the nation’s no. 2 home builder—according to our most recent Builder 100 List—announced that it would begin building homes which integrate pre-installed wireless technology to provide coverage in every room with no dead spots or interrupted coverage as part of its Everything’s Included program, which incorporates smart home technology as a standard in new builds. The builder is the first to adopt the standard, which is certified by Wi-Fi Alliance, a worldwide network of companies that drives the adoption of wireless technology.
“People are excited about living in a home that is more consistent with the way they live their life, and it’s time the home reflected the wireless lifestyle people enjoy at work or on the go,” says David Kaiserman, president of Lennar Ventures. “What we’ve learned [from building these homes] is that we needn’t complicate the home by picking individual smart home features. It’s really about a whole-home solution. We recognize that we live in a wireless world—50% of the worlds internet traffic is transferred over Wi-Fi—so as we thought about the core infrastructure of a smart home, Wi-Fi Certified homes were a natural choice for us.”
The Wi-Fi Certified Home Design engineers the home with wireless access points, which are built right into the home during construction for maximum, uninterrupted coverage. The home is also powered by Amazon Alexa and incorporates built-in technology features, such as connected thermostats, lighting, and doorbell cameras, that are powered by the SmartThings platform. Amazon even sends a service team to the home after move in to set up the devices and make sure everything is working.
The turnkey aspect has been appealing to buyers, as Kaiserman says today’s buyers want a smart home “that just works”.
“Consumers have realized that it doesn’t really matter how [the home] works, it just matters that it does, so we spent a lot of time curating the products we include to work together seamlessly and reliably—you don’t have 15 different apps to sort through, it’s all just built in to the fabric of the home,” he says. “I think homeowners are appreciative of the fact that we are addressing this from the perspective of how they really use smart technology in the home and not in a way that’s about showing them fancy bells and whistles.”
For Lennar, the initiative is setting the company ahead of the pack. Kaiserman expects that in the near future, integrated wireless and smart home technology will be part of the home just like any other system, and builders will have to get on board to keep up.
“A progression is happening right in front of our eyes in the home building business and everyone is realizing that this is something they have to do,” he says. “Think about when you build a home—the architects and engineers provide mechanical, electrical, and plumbing plans. I have every expectation that they’ll add wireless plans into that mix soon.”
The framework of the technology is the key aspect to a successful design, and is more important than choosing the hottest smart home products on the market that consumers will be wowed by.
"Homeowners all have different needs, so we aren’t going to presuppose how they want to interact with smart technology or products," says Kaiserman. While Lennar chose Amazon as the home's hub, the agnostic products can connect to other smart home systems, like Google Home, Apple's HomeKit, or even through more manual switches and remotes.
"By picking a standard like W-Fi, we’ve built a home that’s ostensibly future proofed because it’s built with the infrastructure needed to accommodate the wireless of today and tomorrow.”
