What Brokers Need To Know About Smart Home Tech

Brokerage Insider

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Brandon Doyle, a Realtor in Minneapolis, MN is also a smart home tech specialist. Brandon goes into detail about what tech clients care about, and how best you can help educate them.

TRANSCRIPTION

Eric Stegemann (00:02):

Hi, everybody. Welcome to Brokerage Insider the podcast where we interview the leaders in real estate and technology. I'm your host, Eric Stegemann. I'm the CEO of TRIBUS. We're a brokerage platform vendor. And today on the show, I have a friend and client Brandon Doyle. Now Brandon is a Realtor and a real estate team leader with Remax Results in Minneapolis, Minnesota. And in addition to selling real estate and being a second-generation Realtor, Brandon's also the author of three excellent books that cover specifically real estate sales, but some of them talk about general ideas for other businesses as well. Those three books are Mindset, Methods, and Metrics, the Real Estate Marketing Playbook and Success Rate Marketing.

Now I think all of you should probably read these books. And in fact, many people, I know I've personally sent copies of these books too. So definitely take a peek at them on Amazon and either download it to your Kindle or get a paperback copy of the book. So on top of all of that, of selling real estate, managing a team, writing three books, Brandon's also the creator of a smart home podcast, a video podcast called Home Tech Decisions.

And on this podcast, he reviews just about every piece of smart home tech available. And in seriously, if you haven't subscribed to it, you should just, just keep an eye on what he's talking about. Just with vacuums alone. He goes really into depth. So Brandon, thank you so much for joining us here today.

Brandon Doyle (01:39):

Yeah, no problem. Thanks for having me.

Eric Stegemann (01:41):

So tell us a little bit more, first of all, about just being a Realtor. What got you into the business? Obviously, I already mentioned you're a second generation Realtor and you know where things are at with your team today.

Brandon Doyle (01:54):

Yeah, for sure. So actually I went to college and I got a degree in real estate, so I got my bachelor's and shortly out of college, I was doing commercial real estate appraisal. That was around 2008. So a lot of like pre foreclosure, a bank rate finance, like their warehouses and a smaller office buildings. It was very rewarding. I enjoyed it quite a bit and I was working towards my certified general, but then things changed with the place that I was working and the compensation structure had changed. And I wasn't going to be able to get the hours I needed to get that certification. So I didn't really want to do residential. So I actually switched over and did hotel management for a while and that's pretty much dead end career. So I actually joined my father in the business, I think about eight years ago.

Brandon Doyle (02:46):

And from there we actually grew our team. At one point we had five agents working with us and then just last year we kind of decided, you know, I don't actually enjoy managing quite as much as I thought I did or would, and still enjoy selling. So it kind of just went back to working with clients again, a more, it's more of a focus of stop, really paying for leads. So we actually turned off or Zillow spend and are all of our paper clicks then. So now we're all focused on organically and we get quite a bit from people just finding us online. So a lot of that is just like writing content about neighborhoods and stuff. And we've been, I've been doing that for years. So that's working out pretty well. I like you mentioned a, wrote a few books and then I've got the smart home channel on YouTube with a buddy of mine. And then I also write for avenues and Realtor magazine about not only smart home tech, but also a real estate marketing in general.

Eric Stegemann (03:46):

So obviously Brandon comes to this conversation with a pedigree, not only having been a second-generation Realtor, but obviously with writing books and digging into details and being a feature writer on Inman. So we could talk Brandon and I could talk about 20 different topics on real estate and specifically, you know, what he just mentioned about content. I think we should have our own separate podcasts episode, just talking about Brandon and investing time into building content because he's such a master at that. But today we really want to talk a little bit about smart home tech smart home tech is becoming a really important aspect of the home buying process. And in fact, according to a study by Coldwell Banker, 77% of buyers said they want smart thermostats. 75% said they want smart smoke detectors. 66 said they wanted security cameras and 63% wanted smart door locks. And so Brandon obviously, you know, you've gotten heavily into this space. So what, what kind of started that process for you?

Brandon Doyle (04:57):

Yeah, so I'd say it was five, four or five years ago. My wife and I were living in a townhouse down the road here. And I think it started with like a Ecobee thermostat. And then from there, you know, the echo devices and smart switches. And then when we built our house I had been looking at the different technology for quite a while and kind of documenting my journey and writing about that for Realtor magazine and Inman as well. But just kinda went really deep down the rabbit hole. And then the further I went, the more I found and I started having companies reach out to me and learning about like different technology I didn't even know existed. And so I've really documented everything that we've put in our home. And then in addition to that have been testing out absolute ton of devices. I think I'm up to over a hundred different devices I've tested personally, and then I've helped a friends stuff in their houses as well. So I think I know more than I need to.

Eric Stegemann (06:03):

Yeah. And that's definitely the case, as I mentioned, seriously, he really does get it and goes through the process of buying pretty much everything in a particular space. Like I know what do you have right now that you're reviewing it? What is it? Eight different smart vacuums.

Brandon Doyle (06:20):

Yeah. So we just wrapped up the smart back end review. I did have eight of them going at once and it drove my wife insane, especially when she's working from home right now. So that was a fun test, both of our marriage and the vacuums themselves. But right now I've got some stuff I'm working on surrounding, you know, smart home tech for working from home. So smart office, like right now I have a sit stand desk, which is pretty cool. And then I've got some different lighting options going on that actually notify me of what's going on around me at the house. Cause right now I've got my headset on. So I can't really hear what's going on upstairs, but if the garage door open or someone at the door the Nano leaf that's in front of me here would change colors and I would be notified of that. So that, and the dogs would all start barking too, but

Eric Stegemann (07:14):

That's the point. So when Nano leave me and I haven't even heard of that one, it just tells you something's going on, that you should know about. Yes.

Brandon Doyle (07:24):

So the they're actually just light panels that you put on your wallet. It's more of like entertainment thing. I think a lot of gamers have been like a Twitch streamers, have them behind them. You can do some pretty cool stuff with it, but normally they just set them to have cool lights going and like, can, they can go to music and stuff too. But I use a program called if this, then that. And I just set it up so that like, if my garage door was open, then it would tell send a signal through IFTTT and it would come out on the Natalie and it would turn the lights, all red. We don't want to leave her garage door open. That would be bad. And then if someone's at the front door, not only would the lights turn blue, but then on our show device, it'll actually just pull up in real time. I can just glance at it real quickly and be like, Oh, it's a door to door salesman. I don't need to run upstairs. Or if it's my package I've been waiting for, I can race the dogs out there.

Eric Stegemann (08:20):

Grab it. And by the way, he just mentioned IFTTT, which stands for, if this, then that a funny story is one of the very first video series video training series I did for Realtors way back in 2010, I believe was about how Realtors should use IFTTT and so you can go into the Wayback machine and, and, and find that very old video of me talking about it. And it's probably terribly outdated, but that tool is now become widely used by smart home tech. Right? So you can power things and say, you know, if this thing over here happens, then this other thing, make this other thing, like, for example, light up your Nano liter, right?

Brandon Doyle (09:09):

Yeah. I mean, there's unlimited possibilities and you can combine things even like across things that aren't smart home related. Like I can just make it log every time someone walks by and like, count it on a Google doc or something ridiculous like that. Cause anything that plugs into there, you can make these formulas of a trouble instance. It's all cloud based. So there is going to be like a delay to it. And then, you know, as these companies get bought out or they go under or they changed their way, their software works or then all these formulas stop working. So that can be frustrating. So I really want like, you know, put everything into that. I would definitely recommend setting up your home so that everything is controlled locally. That way you don't have a lag and then you're not reliant on these companies, updating their software and playing nice together. Anyone that had an Google or nest device knows very well. What can happen when a, a company changes their stance about working with other companies?

Eric Stegemann (10:12):

Speaking of that, have you between the two, do you have a favorite?

Brandon Doyle (10:17):

You know, so in our house we use all Amazon devices. I think it was just cause that's what we started with. But statistically Google is actually better at answering questions. And if you have a all Google ecosystem, then there is certainly a benefit to using their products just because you can control everything within one app. So that's pretty nice, but I think Amazon is definitely on the forefront of the technology and advancements and playing well with others. So they definitely integrate with more other products than Google does.

Eric Stegemann (10:52):

Yeah, I I'm, I use Google extensively and actually I've at my house, we have everything set to Google. Like I have nest for my thermostat. I have nest cameras. And so I kind of stayed inside of that ecosystem. So it was better, but most of my family all uses the Amazon ecosystem which is, you know, pretty open and available. And then obviously I think you were alluding to, is nest recently changed their model where before it was, you know, works with NASA and everything kind of played nicely with each other. And then they changed their model to switch over, to being more involved with Google. And when they did that it certainly changed. And, and some of those connections that they had, weren't there. Luckily I didn't have any of those products that broke, but you know, certainly a consideration here is when you make these investments those integrations can change over time. Have you used smart tech or your knowledge of smart tech at all, either products specifically, or the knowledge of the products in any of your marketing for real estate purposes?

Brandon Doyle (12:04):

Yeah, so just having, like putting the content out there on Facebook and other social media channels, I get a lot of people that like reach out to me what their smart home questions. And of course that keeps me top of mind and allows me to like engage them in a meaningful way. So very good in that aspect. And then of course the type of clients that like to work with me or are people that are into this. So oftentimes it's a selling point for me. I can walk them through what I would do if I were them. So I had a client recently purchased a townhouse and like told him all the stuff that, that I would recommend he actually went with with Google. So that's been fun for a few people. I've helped to do the install, but trying to stay away from that just cause it can be very time intensive. And I'm not a licensed electrician. So when it comes to like switches and things like that, like don't really need the liability,

Eric Stegemann (13:06):

But the knowledge that you have that's there. So the fact that you put out this content, and I know you have a video podcast, that's on YouTube that people can subscribe to, but I definitely follow it more iteratively on a day to day basis of what you post on Facebook. And so are you saying that that commentary, that you're, you're putting little chunks out on Facebook as you go through the process of testing before the video goes out, are you saying people engage with that and that's how you you're actually...