Resideo sales leader JD Wix talks with Green Builder Media CEO Sara Gutterman about rising homebuyer demand for connected living and energy management products, and how smart thermostats, utility program integration and lower operating costs are reshaping the economics of homeownership.
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Sara Gutterman: I'm Sarah Gutman, CEO of Green Builder Media, and I'm here with J.D. Wicks, sales leader with residual residue offers, connected living solutions, smart thermostat and other demand side energy management products. Can you talk about the demand that you are seeing for connected living products and systems, as well as energy management specifically?
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JD Wix: There's a lot of changes happening in home building or actually the the housing industry in general. And there's there's been a lot of smart products that have been introduced over the years. Right. And I think the biggest change now is that we're seeing smart products really enhance the overall homeowner experiences in moving the home. So homeowners today are concerned with things like, what are my energy costs going to be?
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JD Wix: What's the cost of ownership going to be? And how do I, you know, how do I navigate those things? And by using like our controls, like smart thermostats are probably the most popular, we're able to enable, you know, features that that lonely those cost so they can manage better. They get data that allows them to see how their how their subsystems in their homes are performing.
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JD Wix: And they can integrate these things to third party products. And you can really just create a better overall experience of how the home lives and how they're able to really navigate and manage those, those typically the largest cost in the home, which is around your HVAC units for heating and cooling and things like that. And kind of a subset of that is, you know, these connected devices are now able to really talk to each other through, you know, software that works with these great, you know, hardware products.
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JD Wix: So now I can, you know, look at a video doorbell, I can manage my garage door, my report to the home and then, you know, tie those into the, you know, the energy devices like thermostats and like that. And lastly, you know, really there's there's the ability now to allow these, these thermostats and things to integrate to utility platforms.
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JD Wix: And that's where, you know, homeowners have the ability to manage their energy. But now they can also get discounts from those utility providers based on, you know, different events and things that may happen depending on where they live.
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Sara Gutterman: I'm happy to hear that you are seeing that there's increased homeowner and homebuyer demand for these connected technologies. Are you seeing more demand based on certain demographics or geographics? Can you kind of slice and dice the market that way, or you just kind of gauging overall consumer.
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JD Wix: Demand, especially with the younger buyers? Right. There's probably just a lot more awareness of of some of these things. I mean, everybody wants to leave the world better than they found it. And I just think that's more of a, you know, that kind of nature. So I think they they look at it not just the products and how they help the home, but how the package, right.
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JD Wix: How their, you know, what what what they do to the economy from a manufacturing standpoint. So I think there's just no roaming or just, you know, an overwhelming or newness to some of this where, yeah, they're more concerned. They want to know where the products come from. They want to know that it's a manufacturer that cares about the environment.
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JD Wix: They want to know that the builder cares about the environment, and these are going to have some type of impact. And again, I think, you know, especially with first time buyers, there's a there's a real challenge with with cost today. Right. So it's not what is the home cost. But what are my monthly payments. You know it's just in all these things way into that.
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JD Wix: So it's kind of the cost of water and what that looks like on a monthly basis, more so than just the home selling for these, these sustainable at these, you know, energy efficient homes today the utility bills are so low. And if you factor that into, you know, the overall cost of ownership, it really changes, you know, the mindset of the home.
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Sara Gutterman: Now let's here's and talk about the vision House Las Vegas that we're doing with Beazer Homes. It's a 61 home in the just outside of Las Vegas and Henderson Nevada. And we're very grateful that is a project partner for that project. We're happy that Beazer is raising the bar on their competitive set of production builders by committing to going Zero Energy Ready Certified for all of their homes across their national portfolio, with this project being one of the cornerstones for that commitment.
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Sara Gutterman: And enabling these are to really kind of talk about it on a national basis. So talk a little bit about what you're seeing in terms of transformation, not only with Beazer and other production builders, but also how you feel like a project, how you feel a project like this can really help raise the bar within the building industry.
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JD Wix: Shows that this is real, right? By having a a community built like this takes all the ideas and formulas and puts them together into a tangible products, and I think it brings realness to the, you know, the idea that you can do net zero or truly sustainable homes who can still build on that are affordable and and you know, and get them out into the population.
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JD Wix: I think that's the most important thing is it just takes it from a, you know, a concept to a real project in a real, you know, a real home.