Landlords are making apartments into smart homes, whether tenants want it or not

Along with smart homes, we're now seeing a growing trend of smart rent house. Alfred wrote about landlords fitting appartment units with Internet connected locks, thermostats and other sensors. The problem is that some tenants don't actually want this technology, and don't wanna feel like they're being monitored So Alfred, first question, is there any recourse for renters if all of a sudden my apartment unit is gonna be turned into a smart rental? Moving out, that is- [LAUGH] That's basically it? Really the only recourse. Yeah, so because this technology is so new, people really associated smart homes with something you do for your own apartment or anything like that, they don't really see it as your landlord doing that for you. So, there's no, no one's filed a lawsuit about this and there's no laws protecting you from your landlord doing this to you, currently, because it's so new, so right now, really the only thing you can tell your landlord is I don't want this, and hopefully your landlord is a chill person Or you can move out. I think people that forcibly create smart homes are very chill people generally, [LAUGH], so. [LAUGH] So let's talk about it from the landlord perspective, why do they want to spend hundreds if not thousands of dollars to add this type of technology into their units? Is there a benefit for them, is there a potential benefit for For tenants. Yeah, it's definitely helpful for landlords, and not all tenants hate this. They wanna be able to control their thermostat, all the reasons that you would want a smart home. There are a lot of people that have privacy and security concerns about it, but for landlords, that means that they can monitor water and energy usage from their phones. They don't have to make a new key every time. They can just make a new code for new tenants. Also, this is something, like, tenants actually, some tenants actually want, and they can charge higher rent, or attract more people to rent from them if it's a smart home and they don't have to do it themselves. And so, to me, this is an interesting aspect of smart cities. Smart cities is this big concept that started many years ago And one of the primary concerns with smart cities is you can't opt out. So that kinda sucks that if you don't like this technology, basically your option is to move out or whatever. Yeah, I think a big difference is though is that with smart cities it's not in your house. You expect your house to be a place where you're private. And your landlord like doesn't know all of this information about you. Like considering that it logs every time you use the code on your door. Yeah. Or how often it's used. It, it basically means that your landlord knows what, when you are in and out of your house Like constantly, you know. There are laws that say landlords have to give you 24 hours notice before like coming into your house but with something like this it's like they've got a virtual presence in your home at all times.>> Yeah.