Renting and Smart Devices

Anything that plugs in. Smart plugs, speakers, displays, air quality monitors, standalone cameras on a shelf. These occupy a socket and leave when you do.

Bulbs. A smart bulb replaces an ordinary bulb in an existing fixture. Keep the originals in a box and swap them back at the end. Nothing is modified.

Anything battery-powered and adhesive-mounted, provided the adhesive is the removable kind and the surface can take it. Sensors and some cameras fall here. Worth testing on an inconspicuous spot first, because some paint finishes lift regardless of what the packaging claims.

The common thread: no wiring, no drilling, no fixtures altered. If a device fails that test, it belongs in the next section.

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Wall switches and dimmers connect to mains wiring and replace an existing fitting. In many jurisdictions this is work restricted to qualified electricians regardless of who owns the property.

Thermostats connect to the heating system, which is nearly always the landlord's equipment and often subject to a service contract.

Locks change entry to the property. Even the type that keeps the existing exterior cylinder alters who can get in and how, and a landlord generally retains a right of access.

Doorbells with a camera involve low-voltage wiring, a transformer, and a device recording the entrance — sometimes a shared entrance.

Anything screwed to an exterior wall leaves holes.

None of these is automatically refused. They simply are not yours to decide alone.

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Worth having recorded: what specifically is being installed, whether it stays or comes with you at the end, who pays if something needs making good, and whether the landlord wants the original hardware kept.

Keep the originals. The old thermostat, the old switch plate, the original lock and every key. Boxed, labelled, in a cupboard. The single most common dispute at the end of a tenancy is a fixture that cannot be restored because the original went in a skip eighteen months earlier.

Photograph before and after. Two minutes, and it settles most disagreements before they start.

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Restore fixtures first. Bulbs, switch plates, thermostats, locks — back to what was there on day one, using the originals you kept.

Remove every device from your account. Anything you are leaving behind, deliberately or as part of a fixture, must be released from your account or it cannot be adopted by anybody else. To the next occupant a still-registered device looks faulty.

Clear entry codes and access. Anything holding codes, keys or shared access should be emptied before the keys change hands.

Take your adhesive mounts off carefully. Slow and warm works better than fast and cold.

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Ask who the account holder is. A doorbell or thermostat left by a previous tenant may still be registered to them, in which case it cannot be adopted and is effectively decoration until they release it. A device belonging to the landlord is a different matter and may be intentional.

Ask specifically about cameras. A camera installed by a landlord that covers the interior of a let property raises real questions in most jurisdictions, and a camera covering a shared entrance raises others. This is a conversation to have at the start of a tenancy, in writing, rather than a discovery later.

Ask what happens if it breaks. A fixture supplied by the landlord is generally the landlord's to maintain. Getting that established before anything fails is straightforward; getting it established afterwards is less so.

This page describes the shape of these questions rather than the law where you live. Tenancy rules vary considerably by country and by state, and a tenants' advice service in your own jurisdiction is the authority.

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Where to go next

• Moving house with smart devices
• Sharing a home: accounts and access
• Setting one up for someone else

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