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Residential New Construction – It’s Mostly Unequipped For What’s Around The Corner

Residential New Construction – It’s Mostly Unequipped For What’s Around The Corner
March 7, 2017 SNH Editorial Team

Technology is advancing faster than ever before leading to new lifestyle choices and new must have installations in home construction.

Lars Thomsen, a futurologist for Porsche spoke with Connected Car last summer and said, “We will soon reach the point where pure electric cars will be cheaper than combustion engines and hybrids. We will reach this point on a global scale before 2020 in fact. In around 10 years, according to our calculations we will rarely see vehicles equipped with combustion engines anymore.”

Think about the implications. This is a prominent employee of a performance based car company predicting performance electric vehicles in less than 10 years. This is a sea change. It’s not about small layout tweaks like the trim styles in your house, for example. We are talking structural changes in home features. Is your garage equipped for electric vehicles? Did the builder provide a big enough electrical cable into the garage for the charging station your cars will need? Or will your “new house” be a dinosaur in just a few years?

Technology advances are not just limited to cars; they are also happening rapidly within homes. Smart home tech is driving lighting, security, safety, and appliance upgrades at an unprecedented speed.

The Greenwich House which was extensively documented on Sabine’s New House, offers the necessary technology infrastructure. Wiring from the mechanical room to the garage is in place to accommodate a charging station for electric vehicles. A Crestron Pyng system runs the entire house and is controllable from anywhere via smartphone.

“It’s remarkable how quickly the future is coming upon us. As home builders and designers we need to be forward thinking,” remarked Sabine H. Schoenberg, host of Sabine’s New House. “I’m very proud of our efforts to guide not just the industry, but also consumers as we continue to integrate all of these exciting changes into our lives.”

While many claim wireless will be the answer to retrofits, trade insiders will tell you that an integrated wired infrastructure is always be better as it provides a higher level of reliability, security and privacy. Without smart home tech in your new home, the appeal and thus value of your home will likely drop in the not so distance future.

To most people the purchase of their home is their single greatest lifetime investment. Buyers who seek to purchase new construction want to stay clear of expensive and involved renovation projects and retrofits. This is why it is absolutely crucial for homebuyers to pay close attention to these transformative trends and to demand these fundamental upgrades from their builders. We will all be swept up in the tech revolution one way of the other, but new construction is a great opportunity to get it right.