Real Estate Marketing & Beyond
Amazon is looking to get into property management with its new Alexa service, called Alexa for Residential.
The new service is designed to help property managers set up and manage Alexa powered smart home devices throughout their rental properties and buildings.
Amazon stressed that property managers will not be able to access their tenant’s data, though they will be able to reset smart home devices remotely to the default settings whenever the residents move out of the home.
"Alexa for Residential also allows property managers to offer custom voice experiences that go beyond the walls of their apartments," Amazon said in a blog post. "They can create custom Alexa skills for every unit in a property, allowing residents to manage rent, maintenance requests, amenity reservations, and more. Property managers can also use Alexa-enabled devices in vacant units to answer common questions, enable self-guided tours, or demo smart home features available in each unit."
One of the best things about Alexa for Residential is that property tenants won’t need have to their own Amazon account, purchase any devices, or set up anything up themselves. The smart home devices will work right away.
“From the moment they walk into their new apartment, residents can ask Alexa to remind them when it's recycling day, play the news and weather every morning, or control their apartment's smart home features, just by asking,” Amazon said.
Residents will, however, have the option of creating or linking their own Amazon account to take full advantage of all Alexa’s features, and manage devices via the Alexa app on their smartphones.
Amazon said that IOTAS, STRATIS IoT and Sentient Property Services are among the first smart home integrators to use Alexa for Residential, and they will open multiple smart apartment residences across the U.S. this fall.
Alexa for Residential plays into Amazon’s larger Alexa-everywhere strategy that was first developed in 2017. The company is building an entire ecosystem of smart home devices, with its Echo smart speaker family serving as the focal point of this effort.
