For Australia’s wealthiest it’s now the era of Zoom rooms

Luxury homes have cameras and microphones everywhere which means what gets said and done during an open home is no longer secret business.

The bar and gaming room at 35 Morgan Street, in Brisbane's Mascot.

When Michael Pallier picked up the phone to call a client about a recent house inspection with a potential buyer, he soon realised he needn’t waste his time.

Mr Pallier, the head of Sotheby’s International Realty located in Sydney’s well-heeled Double Bay, was shocked to learn that while the owner wasn’t home, he’d been listening all along.

“I rang the vendor straight after the inspection, to give them an update, only for them to tell me that some of the comments made by the buyer were interesting,” he said.

“At first I found myself asking, ‘How do you know that?’

Michael Pallier.

“But nowadays luxury homes have cameras and microphones everywhere. We just … think that every house has got cameras and microphones and we just operate like that, so we’re on our best behaviour at all times now.”

Security cameras and microphones were not only popular in Sydney, where Mr Pallier sells homes, but also at the Sunshine Coast, according to a local agent for luxury properties, Robbie Graham, of Ray White. Mr Graham said often those with lavish homes fell into two baskets.

“The tech space in the luxury homes market has two distinct sides. The first is the family with children and the second is the empty-nest mature couple,” he said.

“The families love tech and everything that comes with it, from home automation to having mobile phones that externally access home security cameras and air-conditioning.

“The older buyers who haven’t grown up with technology in the house struggle with wifi connections and home automation, where they resort to having their children and grandchildren come around to explain to them how it works,” he said.

Mr Graham said he’d heard many stories about how the children of owners have had to drive to their properties to turn off alarms, change the temperature on the air conditioners and to sometimes turn lights on or off.

“Older buyers prefer a simple system where, if the lights aren’t working, it’s either a fuse or a new bulb,” he said.

Mr Pallier had similar experiences in Sydney among most buyers in the luxury home space.

“I find there is a push away from automation because a lot of people find it overly complicated and not overly reliable,” he said.

Apartment 203 at 58-60 Newcastle Street, in Sydney's Rose Bay which has lights that turn on to the wave of a hand.

While many were still opting for a manual switch over a touch screen to control lights, there was a shift at play in the types of lighting being installed.

“There’s a big switch towards LED lighting and LED strip lighting. Non-direct lighting is a big thing that has changed house design a lot,” Mr Pallier said.

While smart home automation was hit and miss, Mr Pallier and Mr Graham had both clocked a change in the demand for home cinemas.

“Home cinemas are passé, and they have been superseded by large flat-screen TVs,” Mr Pallier said.

“In fact, I was in a house this week and a person who had a home cinema had since turned it into a gym. He said to me, ‘I’m not going to go and sit in a cinema, I’m just going sit in our lounge room and watch the big screen’.”

On the Sunshine Coast, the only demand for home cinemas came from older buyers. “Media rooms are still expected in luxury homes by the older buyers. The younger families don’t expect them as much,” Mr Graham said. “With the use of iPads and iPhones, most are happy to use those devices as opposed to having a family movie night in the home theatre.”

The cinema room at 35 Morgan Street, in Brisbane's Ascot

There had been several distinct shifts in the wake of Covid, once being the call for a people-dedicated space for meetings.

“I am starting to see, believe it or not, Zoom rooms in houses. I see rooms set up with microphones, speakers, lighting and sometimes LED-screen backgrounds to display scenes,” Mr Pallier said.

Some customers had also made the shift towards more green energy sources, although they weren’t always motivated by trying to save the environment.

“I was in a house in July that had just spent $200,000 to put solar panels all over their roof and they had put 10 Tesla batteries in the garage,” Mr Pallier said.

“This was on an $80m house so it’s not like they couldn’t afford to pay their electricity bill.”

A property at 82 New Beach Road, in Sydney's Darling Point which has solar panels and a Tesla battery wall.

The owner of the property in Point Piper, home to a number of Sydney’s most expensive homes, said they should never have to pay another electricity bill again.

Charging stations for electric vehicles were no longer a luxury, they were expected, Mr Pallier said, with most people setting three-phase power in their garage for that reason.

“If you’re building a new house, you’ve got to have it set up for electric cars because people are asking for that all the time,” he said.