After we acquired a couple of small apartments, some in Cleveland Heights, some in the city of Cleveland, we’ve bought a large apartment building, hundred and twelve units, and we decided that we’re going to renovate every single unit.
We’re going to renovate hallways, and we’re going to change the lighting. We’re going to add music. We’re going to change the entrance. We’re going to put TVs with cool ads. It doesn’t take much, but this is what we decided to do. And we’re going to build the Internet. And we’re going to add amenities, which is going to add things like we have in our houses.
I have a smart house since 2009, probably I don’t remember when Alexa came out, but whenever Alexa came out about Alexa and I connected my light switches and the lights on the Lexus and I made the whole house audio, and the whole thing took maybe three hundred dollars to do it.
So with that in mind, I asked, why didn’t we do it in apartments or why can’t we do it in apartments? People in the apartments want to have similar amenities as people have in their houses. And three hundred dollars later we had units, smart units that had a smart lock, Alexa, smart lights, all of it connected to someone’s iPhone. And those was smart units.
It wasn’t the need. It was: Why not? Why isn’t everyone doing it? It’s cheap enough. It’s very accessible. It’s very easy. There is really nothing you need to do. And it’s fun. And it definitely brings it to your apartment. And it definitely keeps them up in that apartment because at the end of the day, all the amenities that we’re providing, it’s not just to bring the tenant in, it’s to keep the tenant in.
You can only imagine if they wanted to move out of our apartment somewhere else, you will take a long time for them to find similar apartment at the similar price point.
