Golden Real Estate – Page 44

Denver’s Winter Real Estate Market Isn’t Slowing As Much As Reported

Here at Golden Real Estate, we are used to having a pretty active real estate market during the winter months, but recent news reports suggested that the market has slowed dramatically, with sellers more reluctant than in the past to put their homes on the market. Statistics show that analysis to be overblown.

Below is a chart showing 6 years of June and November listing activity on REcolorado.com (Denver’s MLS) limited to the City & County of Denver. (Further down I analyze Jefferson County statistics.) December numbers are not available yet, so I’m only showing November activity. It’s not exactly winter, but the trend over 6 years is still useful for the purpose of this analysis.

What the analysis shows is that there was in fact an increase of sales during November over the previous year and nearly as many new listings. The number of active Denver listings in November was less than last year’s peak but still higher than the four previous Novembers. Both median and average days on market were only slightly higher, and the median sold price was much higher than last November. Moreover, the ratio of sold price to listing price was even higher this November than it was in November 2018. As for this month, there have been 384 new listings through Dec. 16th — exactly the same as during the first 16 days of December 2018.

In contrast to Denver and the full MLS, Jefferson County showed a slight slowdown in every metric except the number of sales and the median sales price, as show in these statistics garnered from REcolorado:

While the number of November closings in Jefferson County this year is comparable to previous years, the number of new and active listings this November is markedly lower than last year, and the median and average days on market are markedly higher. Despite the slowdown, the median sold price is higher—a new record for November—but the ratio of sold price to listing price is lower than all five prior years..

As for this month (through last Sunday) we have 257 new listings here in Jeffco, compared to 250 new listings for the same 15 days in December 2018, so that’s unchanged, but almost every agent I’ve spoken to senses a slowdown in real estate activity that is greater than we typically experience at this time of year.

As I’ve written before, winter is, in fact, a good time to sell a home, but it’s true some sellers continue to think otherwise. If a home is not overpriced, it can sell quickly in the winter months for a variety of reasons, the biggest one being that there is less competition from other listings, but there are countless buyers still getting alerts from the MLS, Zillow and other websites when a new listing matches their search criteria. Sellers also appreciate that only serious buyers ask their agents to show homes at this time of year. Lookie-loos are really a fair-weather phenomenon.

Call one of us at 303-302-3636 for a market analysis, including localized winter statistics. By the way, Golden Real Estate, although based in Jefferson County, is also active and successful in the Denver market. Please consider us when it’s time to sell or buy!

Golden Real Estate Uses an App to Protect Clients From Being Scammed

For over a year, we at Golden Real Estate have had access to an app that is only available to licensed real estate professionals for the purpose of protecting our clients (and us) from would-be criminals or scammers.

The app is called Forewarn, and it enables us to trace any phone number within seconds to verify the age, address, criminal record and other information about the caller.

At right is a screen shot from the app when I enter my own cell number, showing the many categories of information available for any person identified using the app. I urge my broker associates to use the app themselves or ask me to use it when they want to verify the background of any stranger who asks them to set up a showing. Any Realtor who joins Golden Real Estate has free access to this information to assist clients and for their personal safety.

We originally subscribed to this service to protect ourselves — especially our female agents — following the murder of a Louisiana agent by a person posing as a buyer. However, we have learned that it’s a service that could help clients and us from being scammed.

This app is not available to people outside the real estate profession, and any agent who applies for the app is also screened so the tool does not get into the hands of the wrong people.

We use this app to protect our clients from scammers who are increasingly targeting homeowners as well as home buyers.

As explained by Forewarn, fake internet listings, fake homeowners or sellers, and fake investors are just some of the reasons working with a real estate agent who has purchased this app can help buyers and sellers avoid scammers and avoid potentially losing thousands of dollars.

According to the FBI, there were 11,300 victims of fraud involving real estate in 2018, with victims losing almost $150 million We can use the app to verify the identity of anyone pretending to be a landlord, seller, buyer or renter. If we don’t have a phone number for the person, we can use the app to look them up by their name and city. If it’s an unusual name, we don’t even need the city, just the state.

Perhaps you, like so many, have received phone calls, letters or postcards from investors or individuals offering to buy your home. Homeowners have very few resources for verifying such a person’s identity or legitimacy. With this app, we can help you verify a buyer’s identity, and verify their financial history (bankruptcies, liens, judgments), while helping you get the best price for your home. On the other side, there are real estate investors being scammed as well. Being able to quickly verify identity and property ownership may help reduce the chance of fraud.

There are plenty of fraudulent activities in the real estate industry. Using the app, not only to verify prospects but also the other parties involved in a transaction, can reduce financial risk for you as well as bring to light fake identities.

There are so many kinds of scams that we can help you avoid. It’s one of the ways that our broker associates and I can add significant value to each real estate transaction and to our community.

As Realtors, we have many other resources available to us, such as an app which provides detailed information about properties anywhere in America, including the name of the owner(s) and estimated valuation.

This is another reason to work with a broker from Golden Real Estate. Call one of us today!

Putting Your Heirs on Title so They Inherit Your Home May Not Be the Best Strategy

It’s a common practice for seniors to add their children or other would-be heirs to the title of their home, but that well-intentioned act could end up costing those heirs increased capital gains taxes when they sell the property later on.

Let me explain.

I’m not a tax advisor or accountant, but I’ve learned the following. If you add an heir to the title of your home as “joint tenant with right of survivorship” and you die, the heir becomes the owner once your death certificate is filed with the county clerk and recorder. But that heir also inherits the “basis” for your home.

The basis is what you paid for your home when you bought it, plus any capital improvements made over the years. When your heir goes to sell your home after your demise, they will be subject to capital gains tax for the increase over that basis.

Let’s say you purchased your home in the 1960s or 1970s for $30,000. It may be worth over $500,000 now. Even if the basis is increased to $100,000 thanks to improvements plus the cost of selling it, your heir will pay capital gains tax on $400,000. That comes to about $80,000 in combined state and federal taxes on that $400,000 gain.

However, if you don’t add that heir to the title of your home and let him or her inherit the home through your last will and testament, the basis is stepped up to the home’s value at the time of your death, and that capital gains tax liability disappears.

Talk to your tax advisor and a lawyer about this issue. It is easy to remove your heir from the title to your home through a simple “quit claim deed.” The form is widely available online.

Reader Asks: Should I Spend Money on Home Staging?

There are two kinds of home staging: 1) vacant home staging where you rent furniture and accessories; and 2) rearranging your furniture and other “stuff” to make the home show its best.

The jury is out on the former (which can cost a lot of money), but the latter is essential and doesn’t need to cost you anything. At Golden Real Estate, we provide staging consultations free to our sellers. One of our broker associates, David Dlugasch, is a Certified Home Stager^®. Like all our associates, I can give general advice on staging your home, but I hire David to provide a full staging consultation free to my sellers.

Property Tax Is the Original ‘Wealth Tax’

Like you, perhaps, I was surprised and not quite sure what to make of the proposal from more than one presidential candidate to impose a wealth tax, not simply an income tax, on the super-rich.

Then it occurred to me that it’s really nothing new. Homeowners already pay a “wealth tax” in the form of property taxes, but it’s not a graduated tax paid only by the super-rich, as proposed by Elizabeth Warren and others.

Thanksgiving’s Here, and We at Golden Real Estate Are Thankful

Some weeks I struggle to come up with a topic for this column, but not so this week. Allow me to share some of the ways in which our broker associates, my wife and I are all thankful.

First, Rita and I are so thankful to be Americans. In school I studied many languages — French, Russian, Latin, Greek, German and Japanese — and I have traveled extensively around the world, although not so much recently. I attended my sister’s wedding in Sweden, attended “citizen diplomacy” conferences in the Soviet Union, and visited Beijing right after the 1989 Tiananmen massacre (and twice since).

I have visited and marveled at Japan and its culture more than once. I visited the Russian port of Vladivostok (the terminus of the Trans-Siberian Railway) on the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II in the Pacific. I remember noting that pay phones there were free because Russian coins were essentially worthless due to inflation, and that most of the cars on the road were right-hand drive Toyotas and Nissans purchased used from nearby Japan.

Rita and I particularly like France and Italy and long to return there again soon. We enjoyed a week in London following a two-week Atlantic crossing on Cunard’s Queen Victoria with stops in Bermuda and the Canary Islands. When and if I retire from real estate, we look forward to more international travel.

Every trip is great, but we are always happy to be back in America and especially in Colorado. We are, as I said, thankful most of all to be Americans — and Coloradans.

Part of being an American is the opportunity to participate in our capitalist free enterprise system. I’ve always been an entrepreneur. I like to say that, except for my stints at the Washington Post and the New York Post, every paycheck I’ve ever received was signed by me. I remember when I visited the Soviet Union in 1978 learning that Russians could be self employed but only the state could have employees. I realized then that the freedom of enterprise was the core freedom I value most.

Nearly every real estate agent is self-employed, even if they work for a brokerage. I suspect that 95% or more of all Realtors are independent contractors (1099 workers) responsible for their own taxes and expenses (phones, cars, computers, software, etc.) and receive no benefits of any kind. The dropout rate among new agents is as high as 90% and those who make it five or more years have demonstrated a fortitude that deserves respect. I am thankful for Golden Real Estate’s seven top-producing, highly-experienced broker associates whose cell numbers I am pleased to list below.

Next I am thankful for the readers and other members of the public who recognize that we are professionals, not just entrepreneurs, and that we earn what we charge by providing an invaluable service for one of life’s most significant financial transactions. Not everyone sees our value or respects what we provide, so we thank you.

Not every licensed real estate agent is a Realtor — that is, a member of the Realtor association. Everyone who joins a Realtor brokerage like ours must join the Realtor association and pay Realtor dues, which run about $500 per year. But there are non-Realtor brokerages such as HomeSmart Cherry Creek Properties, Redefy, and Trelora Colorado, whose agents don’t pay Realtor dues and don’t have to abide by the Realtor Code of Ethics. I’m thankful for all those firms, like ours, that have chosen to be Realtor brokerages.

Why? Because the National Association of Realtors (NAR) lobbies for your property rights, not just the interests of its members. For example, when the Trump administration tried to dilute the capital gains exemption for home owners ($250,000 single and $500,000 married), it was NAR which lobbied successfully against that change. I could cite countless other examples where NAR’s lobbying efforts have benefited home owners and all those agents who don’t pay NAR dues. To me it’s a matter of professional and corporate responsibility to support NAR with our dues. So, yes, I am thankful for NAR, even when I gripe about dues increases!

Like everyone in our profession, I have individual clients — buyers and sellers — for whose friendship and patronage I am grateful. You know who you are! You have not only granted me the opportunity to be of service, but you have allowed me to learn new things from every transaction. Perhaps you have introduced me to a new service provider such as an estate sales company, a roofer or plumber, or just a great new restaurant! As I have said many times, judge us agents not by our years in the business but by the number of transactions we have completed, because that’s our most valuable continuing education program.

I’m also thankful for my colleagues from other brokerages. Real estate is different from many other professions because of the tradition of “cooperation and compensation” embodied in our shared multi-list service, aka “MLS.” Some people compare us to car salesmen, but consider the following scenario: You go to a Ford dealership and describe what you’re looking for. The salesman realizes that the right vehicle for you is not a Ford but another brand, so he shows you other cars on his computer and then takes you to those dealerships for a test drive, knowing that he can write the purchase contract and get paid for selling you another dealer’s car just as he can get paid for selling a car from his own dealership. That’s how real estate works, made possible by the MLS.

You’d be impressed to see how agents share the keys to their success with each other. I recall once when I made a presentation at a Realtor meeting on how to shoot and edit video tours of listings, happy to have others do videos for their listings, even though video tours are a point of differentiation for us at Golden Real Estate.

So I’m thankful for how the real estate business works and for the many Realtors whom I consider friends, not just competitors. If I or one of my Golden Real Estate broker associates is not the perfect agent for a given buyer or seller, I don’t hesitate to recommend one of them.

Lastly, I’m thankful for the Denver Post and four Jefferson County weekly newspapers which publish this column. Remember, you can also receive it by email, so just send me an email with your request. Several years of prior columns are online at JimSmithColumns.com.

Our Broker Associates:

Jim Swanson — 303-929-2727

Carrie Lovingier — 303-907-1278

Kristi Brunel — 303-525-2520

Chuck Brown — 303-885-7855

David Dlugasch — 303-908-4835

Andrew Lesko — 720-710-1000

Carol Milan — 720-982-4941

High-Tech, Low-Tech and No-Tech Ways to Make a Home More Senior-Friendly

Most seniors would like to age in place — that is, to stay in the home they know and love instead of relocating into assisted living. At the same time, there are practical considerations, especially if a senior lives alone.

There are no-tech and low-tech ways to address the issues associated with aging in place. What’s new and perhaps less known to you are the high-tech and “smart home” solutions that are becoming more and more common. But let’s talk first about those better known no-tech and low-tech solutions.

The common no-tech solution is, of course, to have a caregiver who either lives in or visits you on a schedule. This, however, can be very expensive, unless you’re lucky enough to have a loving family member or two who can serve that function, perhaps trading free rent in your home for assistance with household chores, such as cooking and laundry.

The ideal home for aging in place, according to Jenn Gomer of CarePatrol, has a main-floor master bedroom, main-floor laundry room and a walk-in or roll-in shower — typically a ranch-style home with few or no stairs, although there are 2-story homes with main-floor masters and main-floor laundry. Ideally, the home should be close to at least one family member or friend on whom you can count in a pinch.

If a senior has a fall or is hospitalized, Jenn suggests meeting with an occupational therapist, who can look for trip hazards and suggest grab bars or railings where they could be beneficial. However, multiple falls should be seen as a warning sign that you may need to change the home environment.

Jenn encourages her clients to be open to getting outside help with difficult activities. For instance, if you have a bad knee and your laundry is in the basement, consider allowing a friend or family member to help with laundry or getting an outside home care service to assist. Installing laundry hook-ups on the main-floor is another option, if practical.

A classic low-tech tool is the medical alert button you wear on your person. The original product was introduced by Life Alert Emergency Response in the 1980s, but there are numerous other companies now offering such a product.

Another challenge can be grocery shopping, but one low-tech option nowadays is to order groceries online or by phone and having them delivered, rather than going out on icy sidewalks and parking lots.

If adapting your multi-level home into one that works for you is not practical, Golden Real Estate’s agents can help you find a home with one-level living. In addition to identifying currently available homes that meet your needs, we can alert you every time a new home matching those needs comes on the market

Golden Real Estate can make a senior’s move easier by providing totally free moving from his or her current home to their new home, or to a senior community if that’s their choice. (Jenn Gomer can help with that.) We have our own trucks and movers and provide you with free moving boxes and packing materials, including wardrobe boxes and bubble wrap. You just pack and unpack, and we can even find someone to assist with that. (If you know someone who would like to be on our call list for moving or packing assistance, let me know.)

Patio homes, typically ranch-style homes with exterior maintenance done by an HOA, are few and far between, but if they’re out there, we can find them within 15 minutes of them going on the market. I just sold one this fall.

We’d love to live in a patio home with grounds maintenance handled by the HOA, but we have the equivalent of that at less expense by hiring someone to mow our lawn in the summer and do spring and fall yard clean-ups. It’s great!

Regarding making your current home more senior friendly, Rita and I love the stair elevator which we have on the stairs to our basement in our ranch-style home. We got a great deal on a used one, and they’re easy to install, assuming you have a straight staircase. The seat and armrests fold up when not in use, so they can work on any staircase that is at least 3 feet wide. Rita and I are still quite mobile and don’t need to use our stair elevator currently, but we like knowing it’s already in place for when the need arises. Meanwhile, it’s handy for transporting cases of wine and other heavy items to and from the basement.

If you have stairs with landings and turns, custom-made stair elevators can be purchased, but they get pricey. I can recommend some vendors. For those straight staircases, I can help you find a used one and someone to install it.

A senior friend who lives alone buddied up with a neighbor and texts that neighbor every morning when she gets up. If she forgets, the neighbor texts her asking if she’s okay. Also, that neighbor and two others have keys to her house.

Now, let’s talk high-tech solutions. For such devices, you need to have a smartphone and have internet and Wi-Fi installed in your home.

As a matter of personal safety, I think everyone should consider a video doorbell. When someone rings the bell, it sounds as usual in your home, but it also rings on your smartphone, with a video of the person ringing the doorbell and the ability to converse with him or her. The device can also alert you when there is motion at your front door, and the video is stored online where it can be shared with police. The best part of such a video doorbell is that you don’t need to be home, you only need to have your smartphone with you. The visitor has no way of knowing that you’re not home. Simply having a video doorbell is a good crime deterrent, because thieves recognize it. We bought our video doorbell from www.Ring.com.

There are so many other Wi-Fi connected devices that you can install in your home which alert you on your smartphone. You can even buy Wi-Fi-connected “smart outlets” which make any non-internet connected lamp or appliance controllable (and easily monitored) on your smartphone. I suggest viewing all the many different devices available from various manufacturers at www.SmartHome.com.

National Association of Realtors (NAR) Bans Pocket Listings

During its annual convention earlier this month, the National Association of Realtors (NAR) voted to ban the practice of pocket listings. Pocket listings are listings which are withheld from the MLS, thereby denying other Realtors (and agents who are not Realtors) from showing and selling the listings. The rule goes into effect on January 1, 2020, but NAR is giving MLSs until May 1st to fully implement it.

Regular readers of this column know that I have long decried the practice of selling listings without putting them on the MLS. Doing so increases the chances of the listing agent “double-ending” the sale, resulting in twice the commission, but it also runs the risk of netting less money for the seller, thereby violating the ethical and legal requirement that listing agents work in the best interest of their sellers instead of themselves.

Perhaps you saw me quoted on page 10A of last Thursday’s Denver Post as welcoming this new rule. As I stated to reporter Aldo Svaldi, the only way to guarantee the highest price for our sellers is to expose their listings to the full market of potential buyers, which is only done by putting the home on the MLS. When the listing agent convinces a seller to accept an offer before their home is put on the MLS, there is no way of knowing how much money the seller will “leave on the table.”

The purpose of an MLS is to provide “cooperation and compensation.” Members of an MLS must allow (cooperate with) any other member of the MLS to sell their listing and makes it known how they’ll be compensated — in our market, typically 2.8% of the sale price.

The new policy, called “clear cooperation,” is spelled out in the following motion passed by a 91% to 9% vote of the NAR board of directors:

“Within one business day of marketing a property to the public, the listing broker must submit the listing to the MLS for cooperation with other MLS participants. Public marketing includes, but is not limited to, flyers displayed in windows, yard signs, digital marketing on public-facing websites, brokerage website displays, digital communications marketing (email blasts), multi-brokerage listing sharing networks, and applications available to the general public.”

I can provide an example from my own practice. In November 2018 I listed a home for $1.1 million. Even before I put it on the MLS, a close friend of the seller said he would pay full price. The seller wanted to accept it, but my advice was to consider the friend’s offer the “opening bid” and to proceed with exposing the home to other buyers by putting it on the MLS.

Five days after putting the home on the MLS, bidding had driven up the price significantly and it sold (to the same friend) for $75,000 above full price. The seller was delighted, and so was the buyer, who only asked that his friend match the highest bid.

I could easily have made a quick commission and saved myself the chore and expense of marketing the home and managing competing offers, but I would have been violating my duty to the seller and, it turns out, cost my seller a lot of money. I particularly like that, when all was said and done, the seller netted the full listing price, even after deducting commissions and the other costs of selling!

It will be interesting to see how this rule against pocket listings is implemented by MLSs and how effective it will be. One work-around we can expect is that listings will go on the MLS with the notation that “showings begin on such-and-such a (later) date.”

One of our broker associates, Chuck Brown, attended the NAR convention, including a panel of the titans of real estate — from Realogy, RE/MAX International, Zillow, Opendoor, Berkshire Hathaway Home Services, and others — and they, unlike the board of directors, were mostly against the new policy on pocket listings. Zillow and Opendoor, in particular, say they’ll continue to list properties as “coming soon.”

Clearly the new rule will restrict but probably not eliminate the practice. REcolorado’s Rules & Regulations Committee, on which I have served for over a decade, will discuss it on Dec. 10th. Expect a follow-up on this subject!

Real Estate Buyers & Sellers Have Become Prime Targets of Cyber Criminals

A couple weeks ago, Jaxzann Riggs (right) of The Mortgage Network was the guest speaker at our weekly office meeting, educating us on the important subject of cyber security. Here are some of the things we learned from her.

As we move into an increasingly digital age, cyber crime is rapidly becoming a major part of fraud. In fact, the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Internet Crime Complaint Center estimates that there was an 11-fold increase in real estate email phishing scams between 2015 and 2017. Moreover, 2018 saw a 166% increase in the amount of money lost to real estate wire fraud compared to 2017. As these crimes become more and more prevalent, what can you do to ensure that you do not become a victim?

Cyber crime can take many different forms, but one of the most common is something referred to as EAC, or “email account compromise.” The FBI estimated that this type of fraud accounted for $1.2 billion in losses in 2018—just under half of all reported losses for 2018. In real estate transactions, this typically occurs as wire fraud. There are many different variations of this scam, but the basic idea is the same: just before closing, a borrower receives an email with instructions from what appears to be their title agent/lender/Realtor, informing them that their closing funds should be wired to a different account. The information about their property is correct; the name on the email signature is identical to the person the borrower had previously been communicating with. The borrower, having no reason not to believe the request, sends the money to the new account. In reality, however, a criminal has hacked or spoofed the email address—meaning that the funds meant to be sent to the title company for closing have now wound up in the fraudster’s account. Although there are occasionally “success” stories of money being recovered, oftentimes, the money is gone for good.

If you are going to be involved in a real estate transaction, an easy step you can take to protect yourself is to create a physical list of phone numbers for those involved in your transaction: this can include lenders, Realtors, title agents and more. If you receive a change in wiring instructions, you should always call the sender to verify that the instructions are real. If the instructions came via email, do not refer to the phone number listed in the email signature or reply to the email— if it is a fraudulent email address, your reply will divert back to the criminal, and it will almost certainly contain a fraudulent phone number that does the same. Because phone numbers can easily be spoofed to appear as a different number, do not immediately assume a phone call you receive with a change in wiring instructions is legitimate, either: before wiring anything to a different location, you should always call back the number on your list to verify that the instructions are real. Although this may seem tedious and repetitive, as the old adage goes, it is always better to be safe than sorry.

Unfortunately, even when taking steps to protect yourself, wire fraud does happen. If you realize that you have fallen victim to a wiring fraud scheme, the first thing to do is immediately contact your bank and ask them to attempt a wire recall. Criminals will often have the funds transferred into a bank account in the U.S. before transferring them to a foreign account. If the money has not left the United States, there is a much higher chance your bank can stop the transfer and that the money can be recovered. Be sure to contact your local FBI and Attorney General in addition to filing a report with the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center at www.ic3.gov.

Though wire fraud is scary, the best thing you can do is stay aware and prepared. By working with a trusted professional and taking precautions, you can minimize your risk. Are you looking for more tips on staying safe in our digital world? Give Jaxzann Riggs a call at 303-320-3400.

What’s a ‘Smart Home,’ and What Elements of a ‘Smart Home’ Make Sense for You?

Home automation is now mainstream, thanks to a strong internet and widespread use of WiFi routers in our homes. Perhaps you’ve heard the term “smart home” used to describe a home with devices that can be monitored and/or controlled from your smartphone.

The most widely adopted such device is probably the Ring doorbell. You may have one on your own home. Rita and I do, plus one on the door of Golden Real Estate. If you ring our home doorbell, Rita gets an alert on her iPhone and can see and converse with whoever is there. The visitor wouldn’t know if Rita is home or not as they converse, and, even if the visitor doesn’t ring the doorbell, Rita’s alerted to “motion at the front door” and a video of it is archived in the “cloud” for later viewing — great for identifying “porch pirates.”

If you ring the doorbell at Golden Real Estate, I get the notification on my iPhone and can converse with you and perhaps arrange to have an agent meet you there shortly.

There are countless other examples of “smart” devices. For example, we have a car wash closet on the back of our office building, and I’m concerned about the pipes freezing if it gets really cold, so I installed a WiFi connected device which tells me on an app both the outdoor temperature and the temperature inside the closet. And it alerts me when the inside temperature drops below 35 degrees.

We also have security cameras inside and outside our building which I can view on my smartphone or in the office, allowing me to go back in time to capture suspicious events, such as when a snowblower was stolen last year. I have a similar system at home.

If you subscribe to Dish Network or DirecTV, you have a smart device there, able to schedule and even watch DVR recordings on your smartphone or tablet. My Samsung TV is itself “smart” which is what makes it possible to stream Netflix shows and movies.

Even our refrigerator is “smart.” Rita and I can actually look inside the refrigerator on our smartphones while shopping!

A client of mine has an internet-connected garage door opener that alerts him when the door opens and closes, and he can open or close it from his smartphone — very useful since his detached garage faces the alley and he has no way of knowing if it is open or closed without leaving his house and walking around the garage to the alley.

WiFi-enabled (i.e., wireless) security cameras make it possible to have cameras in places not previously possible. The cameras are powered by lithium-ion batteries that last 4 to 6 months between charges and can be mounted up to 300 feet from their base station. One such application is the wireless camera on the EV charging station in our parking lot, which was once vandalized. Next time, I’ll be able to identify the culprit.

Other applications you might consider are WiFi-connected moisture detectors and smoke and carbon monoxide detectors. Baby monitors are a no-brainer, too. As long as you have your phone with you, you’ll be able to see and talk to your baby in his room.

WiFi-connected electric shades, especially on your out-of-reach windows, could help you save energy and money by opening and closing based on indoor temperature.

My solar PV system at home is internet connected, not only so I can monitor it but so the leasing company which has guaranteed a certain level of production can know when it has not produced as promised and can automatically send me a check for the under-production. (I have received two such checks.)

Nest is a big provider of smart devices, best known for their thermostat, which not only senses occupancy but can be adjusted remotely.

An alternative to lockboxes that is now widely available is the WiFi connected electric deadbolt. When someone rings your video doorbell and you want to let them into your house, you can unlock your door on your smartphone to let the person in and lock it when they go.

There are devices to make electric outlets “smart” so any device plugged into them can be powered on or off from your smartphone. A variation on that is one with dimming capability. As you can see, there’s no end to what you can do to make your home a “smart” home.

If you want to check out other devices for your home, Google is your friend, or simply go to www.SmartHome.com, which sells smart home devices from a multitude of manufacturers, including Ring, Next, Amazon, and others.

Alexa and other “smart speakers” are also “smart listeners” and, like all internet-connected devices, can be hacked, so it is important that you have strong passwords and take other precautions.