WiredScore, the company behind the digital connectivity rating platform for real estate, has launched its new residential product—WiredScore Home—in North America with the National Multifamily Housing Council (NMHC).
Research commissioned as part of the launch finds that more than 8 in 10, or 86%, of North American renters and homeowners have experienced poor connectivity at some point in their homes, forcing them to use and pay for an additional 42 gigabytes of data annually to make up for the weak Wi-Fi conditions. In addition, 50% of North American renters and homeowners would not have moved into their homes if they had known about the connectivity issues.
According to the company, the program will support developers looking to improve the design of newly constructed buildings to prevent the need for future retrofits. It also provides transparency to the residential market, allowing landlords and operators to tout the digital connectivity capabilities in their buildings.
WiredScore Home builds on the success of the commercial real estate certification that has certified more than 700 million square feet across 12 countries impact 7 million office workers since its launch in 2013.
“We are really excited to bring WiredScore Home to North America. Great connectivity is critical to almost all aspects of our lives—leisure, social, and particularly work as we’ve learnt this past year,” said founder and CEO Arie Barendrecht. “We are confident the transparency around digital connectivity in the home provided by our WiredScore certification will mean that consumers are able to make more informed decisions when decided where to live and will allow multifamily investors and developers alike to uphold the highest standards in their developments.”
Multifamily leaders Crescent Communities, Greystar, Hines, and UDR are a few of the companies that are committing to improve digital connectivity in their buildings through the WiredScore certification. So far, 42 buildings have signed up for WiredScore Home in North America.
Kevin Donnelly, NMHC’s vice president of government affairs, added that high-quality digital connectivity is a critical requirement for today’s renters and reliable broadband is essential for almost all aspects of daily life.
“Multifamily landlords, in particular, have been setting out to prioritize connectivity and ensure a higher level of service and superior experience,” he said. “To achieve this, they need to know that the buildings they are investing in can provide for renters today and will also deliver the technology renters will be using tomorrow. WiredScore is a welcome development in the multifamily market and will help provide transparency and recognition for best-in-class digital infrastructure.”
