Technology Essentials

LINKING DREAMS TO TECHNOLOGY

ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE IN HOME-TECH TRENDS

BY TIM WOOD

If you can dream it, it can be built.

It sounds like a marketing slogan. But when it comes to smart home technology, what once felt more like fictional thinking out of a movie is becoming both doable and affordable.

“There really isn’t much we can’t do nowadays,” said Sean Stewart, sales marketing manager for Custom Audio Video. “When the concept of a smart home first hit the market, every part of the house was its own silo. Lighting, HVAC, shades, TVs, home audio, it was all controlled separately, but we are able to fully automate the smart home experience now with one touch of a button or a touch pad.”

Stewart said automation and the increased need for top-level home networks have been the top trends his company has been focused on to start 2021.

“So, you have more folks working from home, you have had kids doing school from home, now the major movies are being shown on streaming networks first. It’s more important than ever to have the proper network configuration,” Stewart said.

He said that as much as we’d all like to blame the Internet providers, the real culprit for slow network speeds is most often the home network setup.

“Whether it’s an inferior modem or a router not positioned centrally in bigger houses, that’s the real issue,” Stewart said. “Coverage is key. And the more electronics we can get plugged in with Ethernet and off the wireless network, the more bandwidth the devices that actually need it will have. A strong robust network with a combination of wired and wireless access points is the solution most every time.”

IF YOU DREAM IT, WE CAN BUILD IT.

Automated shades are also in high demand around the Lowcountry. Kim Klejka, marketing coordinator for Budget Blinds of the Lowcountry, said the trend is being fueled by advancements in both motorization and in full-home automation tech, as well as by the affordability of the home upgrade.

“It certainly was more of a luxury option in the past, but we have some high-end models at very affordable price points now,” Klejka said. “Folks are home more than ever over the last year, so the demand is driving both innovation and a mainstreaming of the products. We see more and more folks surprised at how much they can automate for their budget these days.”

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Klejka said one emerging product trend around the Lowcountry is motorized skylights.

“The need for that crank to open and close those lights is a thing of the past,” she said. “It’s one of those, ‘I wish they had this’ concepts that we’ve worked on with our manufacturers to make it a reality.”

The COVID pandemic has spurred on a rise in home health tech. Video doorbells like the Ettie Smart Video Doorbell also take the temperature of guests trying to enter your home. Touchless doorbells are also available that set off a noise when potential visitors step within view, minimizing the potential spread of germs and bacteria.

Tony Serrato, owner of Lowcountry Electronics, has seen more and more residential customers looking for the tech to make managing the video doorbells all the more simple.

“More home insurance companies are recommending the video cameras overlooking pools, due to many gated communities not allowing fences around pools,” he said. “We now have the automation ability so your TV automatically changes input to show the view of the camera or the video doorbell when it senses activity.”

Serrato, a longtime resident and former Beaufort County deputy sheriff, has owned

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his own company with his wife, Ruth, for the past 13 years. He said that he’s never seen such a wave of innovation that gets all the simplest tasks at home done with one push of a button.

“Technology like Z-Wave, it’s created the ability to link so many different concepts,” Serrato said. “We can set up scenes on an automation hub now, which will do a number of different tasks at once. For example, as you pull into your driveway, you use the hub app on your smartphone to turn on the lights, unlock the door, preheat the oven, turn on the pool pump, and set the proper room temperature instantly.”

Serrato has been installing more and more systems where pushing a button or touching a screen isn’t even necessary.

“There are proximity detectors that fit on your key ring that are linked to your Wi-Fi home network, so your network will detect the signal and start that scene automatically,” he said. “The possibilities are truly endless to create more and more simplicity with this technology. When you’ve had a long day

MONITOR YOUR HOME FROM ANYWHERE

and your brain is tired, buying back those five minutes of remembering and doing all those tasks, it can mean everything in the moment.”

Stewart and Serrato said they are getting more requests for frame TVs, flat screens made to look like framed art that actually display art when you’re not watching your shows.

“That’s been picking up for sure, and so has wall TVs,” Serrato said. “I did a man cave recently where we mounted six different monitors together, so they could either display six different channels or link multiple screens together to show up to a 100-inch size picture.”

Serrato said delivering on customers’ wildest tech wish lists is the coolest part of his work.

“You link the dreams with the technology, and many times, these are homes I don’t want to leave,” he said. “The best part of it is the tech is becoming so affordable, these kinds of tech setups are more and more possible for any sized wallet. We’ve come so far in the last 10 years, it’s a fun time to be in our industry.

SCARCE INVENTORY EXPECTED TO SHAPE FUTURE OF HOME SALES MARKET ‘FRENZY’ COOLING

BY MARK E. LETT

As a veteran real estate pro and farmer, James Wedgeworth knows this to be true: “You can’t sell from an empty wagon.”

Which is his way of saying scarce inventory will shape the market for home sales — nationally and in Hilton Head — in the months ahead.

“It’s about a lack of inventory,” said Wedgeworth, co-founder of Charter One Realty and Marketing, noting that the number of homes available for sale has declined monthly for most of this year.

Real estate sales have been red-hot for a year as buyers and sellers nationwide got busy in the aftermath of the pandemic’s early days of lockdowns, stay-at-home orders and quarantines.

The frenzy triggered higher prices as multiple buyers descended on a dwindling supply of homes for sale. With prices climbing at a fastest-ever rate, words like “crazy” and “insane” were commonly used to describe the superheated housing market.

Now national market watchers and real estate experts say the wild ride is downshifting as families wind up summer vacations, kids prepare to return to school and more workers return to workplaces. Mortgage rates remain low, but concerns about prices, inflation and a Covid comeback are causing some potential buyers to pause.

“Buyers are still interested and want to own a home, but record-high home prices are causing some to retreat,” said Lawrence Yun, chief economist for the National Association of Realtors.

The past year has been “emotional” for buyers, sellers and real estate sales professionals, said Jean

Beck, chief executive of the 1,500-member Hilton Head Area Realtors.

Buying a house has been highly competitive. Some houses drew dozens of offers within a matter of days, with intense bidding often driving closing prices well above asking prices. Getting hopes up, then dashed, generated disappointment and shopping fatigue.

“It’s emotional for everybody,” Beck said.

Scant inventory was the story of the summer in Hilton Head. In June, for example, 150 detached homes were available for sale – 67 percent fewer than the 459 available in June 2020.

In July, detached homes available for sale in Hilton Head declined 61 percent from the yearearlier month, 153 to 394.

The condo and villa market was similarly tight, with 155 units available in June – a 54.8 percent decline from the 343 in the year-earlier month. Condos and villas available for sale in Hilton Head in July declined 49 percent from a year earlier, 160 to 315.

Chip Collins, broker in charge and owner of Collins Group Realty, said he expects the Hilton Head market to remain active, even as home sales slow nationally.

The “frenzy” is abating, Collins said, “not that the market has gone cold. It’s just cooling off from the insane boiling point.”

“I’m seeing and sensing and hearing from friends and peers that the bidding-war mania is subsiding,” he said.

At least four trends are enduring in the Hilton Head market, according to local real estate authorities: a preference to work from home; strong interest from buyers in Northeast states; the Lowcountry’s growing appeal to buyers from other parts of the country, and an increasing number of adult children hoping to live near parents retired in the Hilton Head-Bluffton-Beaufort market.

“I see it every day,” said Wedgeworth, a real estate sales veteran of more than 39 years.

“Some ask themselves whether they want to sit in an apartment in New York City or on the beach in Hilton Head. Others want to work from home in our kind of setting.

“In addition, the kids are moving here to be with parents who came here first.”

Collins, an Ohio native who relocated to Hilton Head more than a quarter-century ago, said the area is drawing increased interest from around the nation.

“We have represented buyers this year from 26 states,” he said, adding that his firm handled customers from 31 states in 2020.

“The joke used to be that everybody came from Ohio,” he said.

JULY

SALES TAKEAWAY

For the overall market – Hilton Head, Bluffton and much of the surrounding area – closed sales in July declined from the year-earlier month by 17.2 percent, 610 to 737. Compared with July 2020, July sales data reported by the Hilton Head Realtors Association showed:

• The days on market fell 37.3 percent, to 89 days; • Median sales price increased to $447,983, compared with $360,0000; • The percent of list price received reached 99.7 percent, compared with 97.2 percent. • Inventory of homes for sales dipped 59.2 percent, to 704 from 1,726.