What Makes a Smart Home a Smart Home?

In a double-pronged assault on housing sales and etymology, Coldwell Banker Real Estate LLC has teamed with the CNET tech news service to offer what they have proclaimed as the newly standardized definition of the term "smart home."

According to a joint statement issued by the companies, the inspiration for the new definition was the alleged need to help real estate professionals and potential homeowners accurately differentiate between a smart home and a property that may not be as smart as it looks.

"With close to five million homes bought and sold in the U.S. each year, it is imperative that there are standardized guidelines for identifying smart homes on the market," said Sean Blankenship, chief marketing officer of Coldwell Banker Real Estate LLC. "The new smart home definition will allow our network of independent sales associates to educate their home buyers and sellers regarding what defines a smart home and how the technology is making our lives more comfortable and convenient. We worked with CNET and tapped into the findings of their smart home testing facility in order to create a definition that is easy to understand and representative of the best smart home technology."

The result of this collaboration is the following: a smart home is “a home that is equipped with network-connected products (i.e., ‘smart products,’ connected via Wi-Fi, Bluetooth or similar protocols) for controlling, automating and optimizing functions such as temperature, lighting, security, safety or entertainment, either remotely by a phone, tablet, computer or a separate system within the home itself.” Now you know.