smarthouse - 9 (1)

From the outside, this house looks just like its neighbors in the sprawling hills of south Bellevue, Wash. Million-dollar views and luxurious outdoor decks are the calling card of the neighborhood. But what differentiates this house is on the inside. As soon as the door opens, a relaxing playlist of smooth jazz starts to emanate from a set of speakers installed in the ceiling.

And instead of fumbling for a light switch on a dark winter evening, all the owner has to say is, “Alexa, turn on the lights.”

In this house, the brain behind Amazon’s Echo serves as a hub that uses its skills to link products from various smart home developers. GeekWire got a tour of the house, which is on the market for just shy of $3 million, earlier this month. The door sets the tone for the rest of the house. A doorbell camera linked to a smartphone will tell the future owner when someone has arrived, and as soon as the door is opened, the music starts.

A smartphone can become a house key with a smart lock that unlocks automatically when it senses a connected device nearby, and a garage with a Tesla charging port and openers that can be synced with smartphones as well.

These are just a few of the smart features built into the Alta Vista View house recently completed by GIS International Group, a development and construction company that has offices in the Seattle suburb of Redmond and in Russia. The four-story, 6,600-square-foot house is on the market for $2.998 million and includes four baths, six bedrooms, a wine cellar and 2,200 square feet of outdoor decks.

smarthouse - 21
Eugene Gershman (left) and Ryan Grams of GIS International Group. (GeekWire Photo / Nat Levy)

The house uses Samsung SmartThings as well as an Alexa-run Amazon Echo Dot to activate many of the smart features. Sonos speakers that connect with smartphones and other devices are installed in several rooms, with hookups for the owner to install more of them throughout the house. The house does not have every smart technology available. For example, most of the installed smart features are confined to the main floor, and the house does not have smart appliances. But much of the house is wired in a way that supports other smart features and possible future innovations.

“In terms of future-proofing, the possibilities here are endless,” said Eugene Gershman of GIS.

This all looks and feels highly technological and labor-intensive, but hubs like Alexa that blend together all the products made by various companies have made this trend cheaper for the builder and easier for the consumer. Just a few years ago, it wouldn’t take much to spend more than $50,000 on integrating and installing smart home products, Gershman said. He would not put a specific number on how much money his team put into smart technology on this project, but he did say he spent less than half of what the company used to spend a couple years ago. Much of the integration can be programmed through basic apps, and most electricians can install the needed wiring.

“On a smaller house, if you just wanted to give the buyer a taste, I bet you could do it for a couple thousand dollars,” Gershman said.

The technology can be as simple or as complicated as the buyer desires. For someone who is in it for the design of the house and the views — but not the technology — pretty much everything in the house can be activated manually in some way, with the exception of the speakers. Tech junkies will find that motion detectors throughout the house can be tied to a number of different algorithms and programmed to trigger different things.

Despite the affordability and relative ease, Gershman said a lot of builders still don’t include even rudimentary smart features, and he didn’t know why. Such high end homes should have at least some examples of the best features available, including smart home technology, he said.

“From a design perspective, we would feel like we were cheating our future buyer by not doing it,” Ryan Grams, principal of GIS said of installing smart features. “We see it as sort of the prerequisite at this quality tier. Not everyone is very well-versed, but not everyone needs to know the programming and IT side, they would simply need to learn a simple application they could put on anyone’s phone.”

Alexa smarthouse - 25

Construction of the house itself was a complicated task. This house sits on a steep slope near the top of the sprawling hills that make up southeast Bellevue. It doesn’t have a typical lawn as a result, but something Grams referred to as an “evergreen lawn” that has been recently planted, and the owner wouldn’t have to manage.  The driveway is actually a bridge from the road to the house. The house itself sits on a foundation made of huge concrete pilings that are up to 75 feet long.

With the house finished, GIS is moving onto its next project: Park12 Bellevue. This project will include 12 townhouses starting in the $800,000s, built around the a central park in Bellevue’s evolving Bel-Red neighborhood. Construction on that will start soon, and Grams said it may have similar smart features to Alta Vista.

“I would not suggest it is going to be exactly the same, but it could very well be. The major factor that will dictate that is whether a newer, easier, simpler system comes and we are able to vet it out between now and then,” Grams said.

Like what you're reading? Subscribe to GeekWire's free newsletters to catch every headline

Job Listings on GeekWork

Find more jobs on GeekWork. Employers, post a job here.