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Amazon intros Alexa for Residential, eyes property management firms

The company said the service is meant to help property managers set up and manage Alexa-powered smart home devices throughout rental properties and buildings.
Written by Natalie Gagliordi, Contributor

Amazon is eying the property management industry with its latest Alexa service, announcing on Thursday the launch of Alexa for Residential. The company said the service is meant to help property managers set up and manage Alexa-powered smart home devices throughout rental properties and buildings. 

According to Amazon, property residents will not be required to have an Amazon account or purchase devices -- the service will work regardless whenever they move in. 

Meanwhile, property managers will not have access to customer data and will be able to remotely reset devices to default settings when residents move out.

"Alexa for Residential also allows property managers to offer custom voice experiences that go beyond the walls of their apartments," Amazon wrote in a blog post. "They can create custom Alexa skills for every unit in a property, allowing residents to manage rent, maintenance requests, amenity reservations, and more. Property managers can also use Alexa-enabled devices in vacant units to answer common questions, enable self-guided tours, or demo smart home features available in each unit."

Looking at the bigger picture, Alexa for Residential plays into Amazon's Alexa-everywhere strategy that emerged early in 2017. Amazon is building an entire Alexa-enabled stack of devices that cover almost all areas of the home. The Echo family of devices is the front end of the Alexa everywhere effort. On the back end, Alexa devices will connect to Amazon Web Services on multiple fronts and help draw developers into the Alexa ecosystem as well. 

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