ACTUS & SALONS

Connected Homes: the Nexity success story

Ambition and innovation. Decision-makers from the world of new construction are always talking about ambition and innovation. This future-focused sector is expected to undergo unprecedented growth within the next two years, while investing heavily in connected home solutions. Nexity has been on that path for several years, with a great deal of success.

Nexity connects residents to their home, their property management company, their neighbors, and their part of the city

Although the big names in real estate development have now adopted smart home living, Nexity was one of the first to venture into it, as early as 2014-2015. For many of these companies, the market for connected homes will broaden substantially in 2020. Some are already planning to sell nothing but connected new homes beginning in 2021.

To anticipate the changing needs of individuals in the city of tomorrow, Nexity has developed a Smart Building solution that includes building-level applications, beyond the tasks of controlling homes and improving residential comfort and security.

The developer is providing the occupants of its new homes with an exclusive application that lets them not only control the home automation equipment in their home, but also connect with their neighbors, their property management company, and their neighborhood through advanced services, such as property management news updates, brief announcements among building occupants, incident reports to the management company, town news, and so on.

This property services platform, called Eugénie, consolidates all of an occupant’s interactions with their environment.

User experience, security, and scalability at the heart of the Nexity/Somfy/Overkiz partnership

In partnership with Somfy, Overkiz is helping Nexity by managing the “connected home” part of the solution, which is reliable, simple, technologically advanced, and made in France.

Installed directly in the electrical panel at the time of building construction, with no internet connection needed, a home automation box that supports multiple protocols, multiple products, and multiple brands enables interoperability between different types of equipment (shutters, lighting, heating, etc.) within the same home.

Somfy contributes its expertise in scalable, long-lasting, and easy-to-use connected solutions, with a range of products that occupants can use to manage, control, and program their equipment intuitively, whether at home or remotely with their smartphone.

Through its secure IoT cloud and its smart gateways, Overkiz brings Nexity’s vision of the connected home to life. Using APIs provided by Overkiz, Nexity was able to develop its own mobile app, while focusing on building a streamlined mobile UX that its customers enjoy using.

Scalability is another strength of the solution because the Overkiz ecosystem lets occupants add new products to their home at any time, regardless of the brand.

Positive and promising feedback

Users really like the application because it creates real convenience in their lives. They also like that it is intuitive and easy to learn. Everyone in the family can access it, and its data security is top-notch. Occupants can control their home from their smartphone. This makes life easier for them. While inside the home, they can remotely control the lighting, heating, and shutters without having to move. These things can also be controlled remotely, from anywhere in the world.

The occupant can check if a light was left on, for example, and simply turn it off. They can program their heater to start thirty minutes before they get home. This paves the way for serious energy savings. Alarms and remote monitoring are also available as an option.

Nexity now offers Eugénie to all new homeowners and has set a target for 20,000 connected homes per year and 700,000 homes in managed communities.

For more information

If you’d like to know more, download the Nexity success story and read the testimonial from Yann Ludmann, Director of Technologies and Information Systems, in charge of Eugénie: https://www.overkiz.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/CAS_CLIENT_NEXITY_UK_16ed.pdf

About Nexity

Nexity is France’s leading integrated real estate group, with business operations in all areas of real estate development and services (residential real estate, commercial real estate, real estate services to individuals and real estate services to companies, distribution networks, client relations, and major urban projects).

Nexity offers its customers (individuals, companies, investors, and local communities) a unique range consulting and expertise, products, services, and solutions to support them with all of their real estate needs (buying, leasing, management, operations, marketing, investing, and more).