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Comment by buro9 | Hacker News Reader

When you sell a house like this... what do you leave behind and what do you take?

This has increasingly been on my mind. I've no desire to sell soon, but there's a Nest doorbell that is wired in, so it stays. A Nest thermostat, which I could remove but when I got the boiler I chose to not have the control panel extra with timer as I knew I had Nest. Then the lighting, the motion sensors... should I take the few thousand GBP worth of Hue bulbs? That feels like a yes, just put in the cheapest bulbs.

And so it begins... some things stay, some things go, and the tooling is the hardest. This person has touch screen control panels and Home Assistant. Even if you left it behind, you'd need to transfer the knowledge around it too. But remove it, and the house goes beyond dumb in many ways.

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There is almost no way you can handover any HomeAssistant installation during a home sale, not unless you want the buyer to be calling you for help with technical issues/gremlins months after the sale closes. Every single Home Assistant installation is effectively a custom install - there can be almost zero commonality between two different setups really. Things break because you don't update them; they break because you do update them. It's a small but constant stream of maintenance tasks once your HA installation reaches a certain degree of complexity and new owner is likely not going to be interested in that at all?

For me and my own HA install, I accept I will have to revert everything to how it was when I bought the home, which is itself a really tragic statement on the state of home automation in 2022. I get satisfaction from running it, but it does require running. It is not an "appliance", and there are still no real building codes/standards for ensuring these things stay compatible for years to come.

Similarly, if the seller tried to convince me to take a house with their own home made HomeAssistant setup, I would likely request it be removed completely before I closed the sale, regardless of any perceived quality of the work. If nothing else, I couldn't trust they hadn't left their own remote access ability somewhere in the stack and I don't have time to audit what might be years of quite hacky integration work.

There is an old saying, "Never sell a car to a friend". Home assistant is like that, but you should never sell it to anyone, regardless of how good you think you've got it running today.

So far I’ve been able to avoid some of this by registering my home with its own email account and then all home automation items to that account.

I am close to adding an iot wifi access point that can remain with the home. All gear connects to it and then up to whatever internet is present.

My HA currently runs in a vm but seeing the fanless devices (or laptops) is encouraging. Chrome books with 8 gb of ram seem like a good candidate to become a server appliance.

Add to it a few tablets and it’s not so bad. Documentation can go a long way as well even if it is for tenants.

The home assistant blue or yellow device is also intriguing for that reason. If it had a touchscreen built onto it it would be one step closer to being self sustained.

> If it had a touchscreen built onto it it would be one step closer to being self sustained.

Until there are proper standards that we can rely on to last for decades plus for automatable home devices in general, Home Assistant will never be truly self-sustaining. Almost all of its integrations rely on unofficial API access, those APIs change often enough to requiring patching etc. Finding a cheap reliable machine to just run Home Assistant has never been the problem either.

Home Assistant doesn't try to solve the elephant in the room: the complete lack of any standards in the industry, instead it tries to patch over it through regular software updates to keep everything working together.

No matter how good you have Home Assistant today, you are just one bad release or API change from any of the hundreds of smarthome product vendors breaking it - it is completely outwith your control. It doesn't happen super often, but it's often enough that I'd think someone a little silly to include it as part of a home sale process. Almost zero of HomeAssistants integrations are supported by the vendor, some vendors are even actively hostile towards efforts to use their APIs in HomeAssistant.

I'm secretly hopeful that the new standard, Matter, finally solves some of this for the long term, especially with Google/Apple buy in, but will probably be years before we see Matter devices hit mass market:

> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matter_(standard)

> https://csa-iot.org/all-solutions/matter/

That's way less of a problem than you make it out to be. As long as you don't use some kind of bridge but just a local zigbee or wifi network not connected to the internet everything will stay as is until a device physically breaks. Few devices actually need a cloud connection and and there are always alternatives that don't.

This has been my experience as well.

Still, some manufacturers like Lutron makes some nice switches however their cloud connectivity is not something I wish to keep a dependency on for the initial setup. There's simply no reason to make it mandatory.

Another piece of useful gear that is being discontinued is the Logitech Harmony Hubs... no replacement really, and the existing gear will be supported for an unknown period of time. Would be a great candidate to open source.

10 years ago I sold a house that had only a couple smart switches, and I took them out before we listed and replaced them with regular switches.

A few months ago I sold a house a house with lots of Insteon stuff, and I left almost all of it in place. Partly it was because we sold quickly and I didn't have time, and partly because it was 9+ year old gear anyway. Insteon has the benefit that the keypad scenes and switch-to-switch links work without a hub. I took my hubs (ISY99 and HomeAssistant) which means no automations or timers.

I would have left the ISY99 if the new buyers had asked, but I didn't want to provide tech support of any sort for it. The downside of this type of gear compared to (the orders-of-magnitude more expensive) commercial stuff is you really have to know quite a bit about it to manage it. For the most part there's really not any local trades people you can call for service, and frankly, it's not worth the headache as a seller to even try to explain any of this.

In my new (current) house I'm in the process of installing Zwave switches. I think they're pretty hub-dependent, which is definitely a downside compared to Insteon for resale. I am really not sure what I'll do when I move, but hopefully it will be several years before that's an issue. I am fairly certain though that HomeAssistant (both software and ecosystem) won't be at the point where I could just leave it for the new owners and not cause more trouble for myself than it's worth.

ZWave is designed to work without a hub once devices are programmed, but you do need to go the extra mile to make that work - as an example you can configure a ZWave switch to send a message directly to the lights it should be controlling, rather than going via the hub (although the hub can also be notified). If you’re curious the keyword you’re looking for is Association.

ZWave is nice because once you get them connected to a USB stick, that stick is all you need to transfer to a new owner; you can take your hub with you. The new owner doesn't get your automations, but those are personal anyway.

I've been wiring up my house for the past couple years. All of our light/dimmer/fan switches are Lutron Caseta and work without a hub. You can add the hub for additional automation and functionality, but you don't need it. Without the hub, the switch controls the device and it just works.

When we leave my plan is to leave the Caseta system in place. Some of the devices are wireless and some switches have batteries (CR2032). We did this so we could put switches in locations you would normally have switches in a modern home without having to tear out the walls and rewire an 80 year old home. Ripping the system out is not an option, and I'm ok with that.

Everything else is going with me. All the z-wave outlets, bulbs, timers, sensors, etc. will still be useful in a new home. I've saved all my old outlets so it will be an easy swap switching the new back to the old.

The only thing I'm unsure about is the Wyze camera/security system I am currently building out. My expectation is that by the time I even think of selling my home it will be obsolete so I'll probably just leave it for the new owners to worry about.

This is why I opted for Shelly on my house build. The dimmers keep dimming and everything works regularly without a hub/HA/Wifi. Leaving the modules inside the light switches. No need for special bulbs and having switches with springs allows any light to be dimmed as long as the fixture/bulb supports it.

There's room for a future product to discover everything within a house. Find all the Shelly devices, figure out which bulbs are Hue, discover any small sensors left behind, etc.

Personally I'd prefer if Zigbee just took over everything, then everything would be interoperable and we would avoid being in yet another dystopian hellscape.

It'll be easy to find the Shellys. Just look for light switches that don't cause the light to turn on or off, or lights that turn on randomly. We put a Shelly 2 on every light switch in our new build 2 years ago (about 30 Shellys) and over 50% of them have already failed.

Usually its either the relay refusing to switch on or off. Or its able to switch on and off via the app, but not via a light switch that it was happily doing the day before. Or it disappears off the WiFi and refuses to connect no matter how many resets / power cycles are done.

After replacing 10 or so of them, I decided it was easier to rip them all out.

I just did this, and it's... fun. Particularly account transfers--most devices that are tied to internet accounts (like Nest) don't allow you to transfer them to other accounts.

So hard-resetting them is often the only option, which is often a time consuming process in itself (I'm looking at you Insteon) and throws away the configuration.

I didn't even attempt to leave the HomeAssistant-based stuff in place.

So for stuff that's not trivial to remove just set up new accounts i.e. 123ExampleRd@gmail.com, tie everything to that e-mail and then just hand over the passwords when you move. Preferably do this when you move in, It also solves the issue of providers with no means to share accounts or devices that tie to google/other auth, this way you share the password with everyone who lives with you without giving out any personal credentials.

Not to mention the convenience of having the ability to have e-mails sent to whoever happens to be resident at that property and keep a history that can be transferred. I.e. maintenance invoices, remodel invoices, appliance receipts. Then when you sell the house the new owner will get all that info.

Yea, that's definitely what I should have done. But it did not cross my mind when I originally set everything up. Next time!

This does prevent doing some cool stuff, but I have a rule that everything still has to work without HA. Obviously automation won't, but at the end of the day, the light switches are still light switches. The sensors will simply just not send their stuff anywhere.

You negotiate it between the buyer and seller. You can take everything, or leave everything if you agree.

Otherwise the default if not excluded in most contracts in the US would be to leave nearly all of it. Kind of like keys, even if something is not permanently affixed to the home it is "annexed" and transferred with the home when it is part of the customized home automation system. So the thermostat is part of the real estate even though it is wireless. The motion sensors and door bell are both annexed, and fixtures as they are attached with a wire. The lightbulbs are one thing that is probably not annexed or a fixture, it is a grey area, but potentially are addressed specifically in the contract like curtains.

The trick is just to make all the automation optional. If I sell my house, I'll hand over my Lutron Hub and Z-Wave USB stick. If the new owner wants to plug those in to something, they'll have a bunch of entities to automate how they please. If not, it's just a house with a bunch of light switches like any other. Well, there are also some door/motion/humidity sensors, but it's not like they do any harm if you don't do anything with them.

I've experimented around with HA and some other options for my home. We bought our home just a few years ago, and not likely to move soon, but I thought about perhaps registering an email for the house, and using that for accounts that I wouldn't consider taking with me. Selling the house would consist of clearing out most (perhaps all) email from the inbox, clearing the trash, changing the password for the email account and then handing it over to the new owner. Then they just have to go through the 'forgot password' routine to create new passwords for accounts linked to it. Anything I plan to take with me would need to be disassociated from that account first, of course.

This is just a thought at this point, frankly, so there are obviously some gaps that need to be worked out.

I sold a house with a bunch of smart home stuff last year, but it was all commercial stuff, nothing like a HomeAssistant system. The buyer wanted it and I didn't (and it would have been a hassle to remove), so it was a win/win for me. I just transferred all the accounts and/or changed the emails and passwords, gave them the credentials, and walked away. I do think that this is very situation dependent and there's risk of getting into weird situations where the buyer wants support or something. But I think that as long as the buyer reasonably knows what they're getting into, and you're transparent about what you're leaving, you are under no obligation (either legal or moral) to provide post-sales support...

Kinda related but I've always imagined selling a house and leaving behind a "readme" with the latest state of things. I know inspections cover many things, but it'd be nice to have something from the previous owner talking about how specific things work.

One of the most frustrating aspects of this is all the stuff that's buried in the backyard. I've had to painstakingly survey the property to find all of buried electrical and water pipes and I fully intend to pass the map on to the next owner.

Google is failing me but I've seen advice on having a book for your home. It lists the as-built, photos of the walls showing the wiring and pipes etc and then updates over the years.

I think "How Buildings Learn" by Stewart Brand covered it.

I had a very similar setup in my previous apartment. I used a lot of battery-powered Zigbee devices for motion sensors, contact sensors, etc. and attached them using 3M command strips. I also wired up some Zigbee switch modules behind the light switches, so I could control all of the lights in our house. (This was way nicer and cheaper than using Hue bulbs everywhere.) I also had curtain motors, and a SwitchBot Hub to control air conditioners, etc.

Everything was pretty easy to remove and take with me to our next house.

I didn't have a "full" setup, just a Nest and a few rooms on Hue; I ended up leaving it all behind— the realtor actually had the Nest right on the listing like it was a major selling point, and our new place had an older boiler anyway, so it wasn't clear it would be a good fit.

It was fairly easy to just factory reset everything and walk away, but yeah if there was an actual PC/RPi and a user-managed software stack in the picture, I could picture it being a real headache to sort out.

I believe there are laws (the legal term being "fixture," for things permanently attached to a home) about what can be taken unless it's explicitly included in a contract. The sale contract will probably say that fixtures are included, and if you are not selling certain things, those will need to be specified. And from some brief reading, you may need to be careful earlier in the process as well to avoid false advertisement in the listings.

I feel like the declarations for what comes with the home are going to start to get longer. The big ticket items used to just be fridge/stove/etc. but I wonder if people will start making sure they declare (or explicitly exclude) other things when selling a house.

I moved in to a house with a Nest and it wasn't too difficult to set up again after doing the hard reset. Would've been much more awkward if I moved and there was just no thermostat...

Replace everything with non-smart devices before listing the home and this will be a non-issue.

If I bought a home with smart doorbells and cameras and other stuff, I'd rip it out and replace it anyway. Who knows if the previous owner still has them on their account, or can access them in some way?

It has long been common wisdom that you should rekey or replace the locks when you buy a home. The same logic applies to smart devices.

Things like light switches (zwave, wifi) could probably remain. New owner would just pair them to their own hub/controller.

Hubs probably go with previous owner. Turn-over too complicated - just unplug it and take it.

Something like a Nest (or anything else with direct cloud integration) is a bit more complicated. You'd either have to unpair it from your account or replace it with a dumb thermostat.

I just sold, all switches were GE ZWave paddle switches, new house is old wouldnt work, left them all.

Both doors were Z-wave enabled locks, left both of them as I bought updated ones for the new house

Left 2 IP Cams (with manual and details) that were not smart to take down, and planned on switching at the new house.

I took all the Ubiquiti wifi gear, all the home automation hubs and anything I could EASILY reuse.

It also seems like it would severely lower the value for any buyer who is not interested in all that stuff?

We left the hardwired stuff, a couple Nest thermostats and the garage door openers (obviously) that were connected via wifi, and unplugged and brought with us the Phillips Hue hub. I forget if I took the time to take the Hue bulb out of the ceiling fan.

> you'd need to transfer the knowledge around it too.

My experience with house shopping in LA is that you've got no leverage to question why some panel is missing or some disconnected wires are sticking out of the wall.

Speaking as a prospective buyer, I'd expect the seller to remove any and all cloud-connected devices before selling. To the point where I will explicitly list them as deductions in my offer.

How are you able to make such demands given the current market? Every single house on the market has atleast 4 offers...atleast here in SoCal.

you wouldn't be required to perform KT.

in Texas anything attached stays so even lightbulbs but you can also exclude anything explicitly.

I believe one of the hosts on the Coder Radio podcast moved into a home with some home automation stuff (light, heating and locks), but wasn't informed about the configuration or how to operate it. He described it as moving into a haunted house.

This sounds incredibly fascinating. Do you have a link to the specific episode or a title?

I looked, but it's a while back. It was just after the show returned from a break, and it was part of the opening chit chat between the hosts, so not topic of the show.

Sure, but you might just throw in cheap bulbs before you show it. Depends if you move out first.

If I ever sold this place, I would move out most of my ha and automation stuff first.

Even a generic hot cold thermostat is pretty cheap and easy to put in.

Would probably leave recessed touch screens though.

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