Consumer Electronics Show (CES) has been the trade show of the consumer electronics industry since the 1960s. Apple, Phillips, Atari, Sony, Kawasaki, AT&T and other top brands have unveiled countless products like computers, smartwatches, video games and consoles, smartphones, tablets and self-driving cars. But as IoT products like smart locks, thermostats and sensors become more prevalent, CES has become a big event for proptech, too.
SmartRent is always looking for ways to learn, teach and collaborate with industry leaders, so we attended the most recent CES in Las Vegas, Nevada, on January 7-10, 2025. Our very own Braeden Scheer, Vice President of Product Management, spoke on the panel Navigating Multifamily IoT Markets. If you didn’t attend CES, here’s what you missed.
Proptech takes center stage at CES
While many in multifamily think of proptech as primarily business technology, the growing popularity of IoT devices (now at an average of 22 devices per household, according to Parks Associates research) puts some products squarely in the consumer technology space.
Owners and operators can monetize these technologies while improving the resident experience. In short, this technology presents an opportunity to attract more prospects at higher rents—and keep less modernized communities from luring them away. But achieving that isn’t always easy.
SmartRent’s vision: Smart technology as core infrastructure
At CES, Scheer put it this way: “As we turn the corner in 2025, smart technology is no longer a novelty or an amenity. It is becoming core infrastructure at communities.”
“What I'm really looking forward to seeing is the underlying value that smart technology can deliver,” said Scheer. “We need to understand what is happening around energy, behavior and usage across multifamily communities and in individual units and how we can make sure to influence that in a positive manner.”
The multifamily IoT ecosystem: Challenges and opportunities
The multifamily IoT ecosystem is complex, and the more it grows, the easier it will be to implement this technology as part of your tech stack.
However, technology partners have a huge role to play, according to Greg Moura, Executive Director of Business Development at Johnson Controls. We need to:
Provide versatile solutions that easily scale across large, diverse portfolios.
Develop intuitive technologies. High resident and staff turnover mean solutions with minimal training requirements will succeed most.
Keep costs low by making installation fast and easy.
Deep integrations are the key to efficiency and scalability
As Scheer points out, property managers may be working with 15 or more vendors to keep their community running. They’re looking at each one and asking how seamlessly it works within the entire ecosystem, and how that efficiency is becoming a differentiation point—or not.
“The level of detail this industry pays to the most minute operational things onsite is honestly impressive,” said Scheer. “We have customers that look at their entire field structure, and they’ll be tracking the time it takes just to rekey a lock on move-out. That one task, they’re tracking across potentially 120,000 apartments homes.” As owners and operators onboard more and more solutions, data efficiency across technologies will be a key differentiator for efficiency.
“It’s become an expectation for residents to have these technologies onsite, but it’s also becoming an expectation for the onsite staff as well,” said Scheer. “The performance of this smart technology boils down to NOI, it boils down to OpEx, and it’s going to come back to how much time and efficiency we are creating.”
SmartRent’s commitment to the multifamily industry
SmartRent has you covered. From the beginning, SmartRent has prioritized deep integrations with multiple providers. We build scalable solutions designed to serve owners and operators, property managers and residents—everyone who uses our technology every day. We’re proud to help lead the multifamily industry toward better living and working with smart technology. We enjoyed speaking at CES, and we’re excited to apply everything we learned to our customers and solutions.
Wondering when to adopt smart apartment technology at your own properties? We've put together three questions to ask yourself as you consider that decision. (https://smartrent.com/news/navigating-the-smart-tech-adoption-curve/)