I’m selling my current house in about a month. I don’t think the new buyer is very tech savy. I have a ring pro, nest, several smart switches, and smart bulbs. I’m taking my smart things hub with me.
What’s the best way to turn over the house to the new owner? Am I better off resetting my smartthing hub and starting from scratch in my new house? I have a few automations setup, and some webcore stuff too.
You can see what other people have done in this situation by looking on the quick browse lists in the community – created wiki, looking down near the bottom of that page for the project report section, and choosing the list on “Selling a Smart Home.” 
Also, some important things to note about selling a smart home…
When you show a home you are advertising it. That means buyers are entitled to rely on what is demonstrated/shown to them, As making an offer on your home might mean they don’t make an offer on someone else’s.
Although the law is still catching up with all of this, there are some important Factors to remember. Also note that some of the laws may differ from state to state.
In general, when selling any home in the US, anything which is screwed into the wall is supposed to stay. For example, curtain rods are supposed to stay. Fancy door knobs. Accessibility devices like automatic door openers. All built-in features.
Whether or not window coverings and plug in appliances are supposed to stay does vary by jurisdiction.
One of the problems with smart devices, however, is that the warranty may not transfer from the old owner to the new owner. This can make things a little more complicated, and again, the law hasn’t caught up with this yet.
The FTC just issued new guidance in January 2018. They are recommending that When you prepare a house to show, you prepare a list with every smart device And whether it is staying or not staying. You should also have a separate list which indicates whether the warranty transfers or not. (You don’t have to show that one to the potential buyers unless they ask for it, Because they can do their own homework on that one once they know what the brand and model numbers are of the smart devices that are staying. But it still good practice to have it.)
The FTC is recommending that every device be factory reset and that the new owner set up their own new accounts, for privacy reasons. That makes sense, but it does mean you need to make it clear that that’s the condition that you are transferring the home in.
Real estate brokers are starting to adopt the FTC’s new guidance. Here’s a typical blog entry:
If you or the agent at anytime demonstrated specific automations like “when you come home the lights come on,” then you have advertised a feature that you need to transfer to the new owner, as it might have affected their buying decision. That’s when it gets complicated when a hub is required To support that feature.
Just remember to think of all your pre-contract conversations as advertisement for the thing you were selling, and it will help you understand why it matters. It’s not just that the person might have to go out and buy their own $99 hub. It’s that they might have chosen your house over a different one because they thought it was “move-in ready.” So you need to make clear that you are leaving behind the hardware, not the automations and that you are not providing tech-support. They need to set up their own rules.
So language like “for example, on our account we set up rules to turn on the lights when we came home“ would probably be a legitimate pre-sale conversation. Language like “and the lights will come on when you come home“ are promising a feature you might not be delivering. And that’s problematic.
The pre-2018 advice used to be to set up a new account with everything on it. But now with all the privacy concerns, the new advice is just to factory reset everything like it just came home from the store. That way the old owner doesn’t have any information about the accounts that the new owner will be using. So you want to have a statement at the bottom of your inventory list of the devices that are being left behind that says Something like “all devices Will be reset to factory defaults before transfer.”
Here’s a blog entry with links to some of the more common devices on how to get them reset for this kind of transfer:
The most important thing legally is that there is a written agreement as to what is staying and what is not. That’s where your original list would come in handy. Otherwise make sure you include one as part of the sales contract.
Talk to your agent about the appropriate verbiage For your location. If they don’t know, they should be able to find out.
https://www.mymove.com/moving/moving-smart-technology/
If you have $1000 of nest protects that you don’t want to leave behind when you move, it’s better to remove those before the house is shown and replace them with less expensive smoke detectors, for example. The same thing with smart locks, smart thermostats, smart sprinkler systems: all the expensive stuff that a buyer might consider a “fixture“ because it’s not just a plug-in.
It’s not your job to demonstrate to potential buyers how smart a house can be. 
your job is to be truthful in the advertisements for the specific property that you are selling. If that means dumbing the house down before you start inviting people in to see it, then that’s what you do.
Ok, I saved my old aprilaire thermostats and stored them next to the upstairs air handler.
If I ever sell, I create ‘covers’ for the ecobees and mount the old thermostats on them. That way, people see those… and I can simply re-install those on my way out the door.
Smart tech will not be used as a selling feature.
If potential buyers ask, I would discuss. I would tell them I’m planning on taking the window/door/motion sensors with me, that the replacement cost for me would be $1000 and if they want the sensors I’ll add that to the price of the home.
I would not include the smart lock in the home sale. It would be described as a “temporary feature to facilitate real estate agent access”. Again, I have fortunately saved the prior lock. And the Chamberlain? The opener would stay; the myQ interface would come with me. All the networking gear would also come with me.
like JDR said it would be to your best interest to remove all the smarthome devices and just put dumb switches and plugs back in. that way you are off the hook it they arent tech savy and cant deal with smarthome hickups.
I thought I would chime in on this thread with my experience since we are currently nearing the end of selling our SmartThings based smart home.
Like others mentioned, going into listing our home I knew anything that was in the house when it was listed had to stay. So the debate on whether to pull it all, leave it all, or something in between began. At the time I had 220+ devices in SmartThings and the house was almost fully automated. I very seriously considered the pull it all approach, thinking I could take all the devices to our new house and install there. But in the end I landed somewhere in the middle. A couple factors went into that decision, but the main factor was we had some items that were both in my mind appealing to the new owners and also hard to remove. Things like water main shutoff, under cabinets LED strips, etc. So i thought I would leave the basics behind as a somewhat appealing smart home basics scenarios. And there was a small piece of me that wanted a hardware reset given the potential of Matter on the horizon 
. So I set out with a few ground rules:
So I purchased a new Aeotec SmartThings hub, setup a generic email address and Samsung account for my house and began the process of removing, resetting and adding things to the new account and location. In the end here’s the devices that were left:
Overkill? Probably, but IMO its a sensible “basic” smart home that is easy to use. Some items have their own apps, but in the end everything can also work with SmartThings. I thought I removed a lot, but in the end this ende3d up being right around 100 devices. Those light switches and leak sensors add up! I did end up breaking my no custom code rule for the zemismart zigbee curtain rail. But even if the future platform change break it, it still has a remote for manual control. I also removed almost every single automation. I setup SmartThings Home Monitor for leaks, smoke, and security with basic settings, but i’m not automating it. I also setup some very basic scenes for the future owners like Goodbye, Welcome Home, Goodnight, Movie Time, etc. The only automations i’ll leave behind are the front outside lights coming on at sunset and off at sunrise, garage lights turning on at night when a door opens, a garage door open reminder and a humidity automation for the bathrooms.
Now that our house is under contract, did the smart devices help sell the house? When the house was being shown, I had an automation setup to turn all the lights on, open blinds, etc when the front door unlocked (a prospective buyer arriving). And the opposite when it was locked (them leaving). During our open house, I also left behind a tablet with SmartThings on it so the agents could show the movie scene where the shades close, lights dim, etc too woo potential buyers (because why not!!!). We did get some feedback that people looking at the house liked it, some asking if it worked with Alexa, etc. But in the end…it appears the buyers we went with don’t even own a voice assistant speaker 
So in 2022, where the housing market is super competitive, in my experience it didn’t matter.
“…everything that was in the house when listed had to stay”. So then… you cannot list a house until you’ve removed all the furniture? All the Echo Dots on the counters have to stay? My TV has to stay? How about my pet cats. They’ve never been out of the house - do they have to stay?
Here’s how I see it. If I were to list my house today, I would definitely pull all the smart stuff. If the law says that in having had window sensors I must ensure there are sensors on every window that had them, I would pull mine and replace them with new sensors. I would pull my smart lock, and replace it with a different code-entry lock. I would leave the cable modem - WiFi switch, and take my own with me.
The listing would not mention that it’s a smart house.
The reality is that very few folks moving into an area like mine nowadays just buy the home and live in it as-is. They usually gut the house, and rebuild. It would be a terrible waste for me to have to essentially do a new smart home from scratch, while the perfectly good components I currently have get the wrecking ball anyway.
In the US, this varies by jurisdiction.
In most places, although not all, anything that is attached to the wall in a fixed position is expected to stay. So light fixtures stay. Curtain rods stay. Picture hooks stay, pictures hanging from them do not. Sensors screwed into the wall stay; echo dots sitting on the counter do not. Cats don’t stay. 
Window coverings like curtains and blinds are a special category. in some jurisdictions they are expected to stay, in others not.
In most jurisdictions permanent landscaping like fruit trees and rose bushes are expected to stay; potted plants are not.
But all of that is in the absence of any other written agreement. You can put in writing that your offer to sell “includes all contents,” in which case anything inanimate, from the echo dots on the counter to the spoons in the drawers is expected to stay. (Still not the cats.)
And you can write an offer to include/exclude pretty much anything specific you want to. Include the backyard chickens. Or the cats. Exclude the screwed in sensors. Or the rose bushes.
The broad statements cover what a buyer can reasonably expect to be there when they move in in your town absent any other written agreement. But you can get as specific as you want as long as you’ve both agreed in writing. And anything you as the seller want to exclude that is different than what’s usual in your town is supposed to be disclosed at the time the house is shown, so that buyers can fairly compare one property to another BEFORE making an offer.
This comes up a lot for people like me who are wheelchair users. Typically we’ve added multiple modifications to a property that would be useful in our next home: ramps, grab bars, automatic door openers, special faucets, pull out baskets in the kitchen cabinets. The rule in most places in the US is that if it’s screwed in, it’s supposed to stay unless specifically listed otherwise.
I had friends who got burned by this because their real estate agent didn’t fully explain it to them ahead of time and they had to leave behind $4,000 worth of automatic door openers because the buyers wanted them and they had been there when the house was shown. My friends had expected to take them to use at the new place. 