New homebuilding approach embraces Wi-Fi CERTIFIED Home Design™ to enable seamless voice control, shopping and home automation
First homes for sale nationwide in July
MIAMI/SEATTLE (June 14, 2017) – Lennar (NYSE: LEN and LEN.B), one of the nation’s largest builders, today announced the world’s first Wi-Fi CERTIFIED™ home designs featuring integrated home automation and voice control with Amazon Alexa – all a part of Lennar’ signature Everything’s Included approach to homebuilding.
Lennar is the first to embrace the new Wi-Fi CERTIFIED Home Design™ program announced today by Wi-Fi Alliance®, the worldwide network of companies that drives the interoperability, adoption, and evolution of Wi-Fi® globally. Lennar’s Wi-Fi CERTIFIED home designs are powered by Ruckus Wireless to provide coverage in every room with no dead spots. This allows buyers to control their lights, front door lock and thermostat simply by talking to Amazon Alexa. Wi-Fi CERTIFIED home designs enable today’s best smart and streaming products to operate at peak performance and are ready for the future as new technologies come to market.
“Amazon and Lennar share a common belief in putting experience and the customer first. Engineering a home for the connected world is a natural for Lennar, but bringing it to life with Amazon Alexa is a game changer,” said David Kaiserman, president of Lennar Ventures. “Now, customers can see first hand how simple, powerful and affordable a smart home can be by visiting Lennar communities around the country.”
“We’re very excited to work with Lennar because we think customers will love the experience of a move-in-ready smart home with Alexa,” said Daniel Rausch, VP Smart Home at Amazon. “With Lennar’s new homes, customers can start asking Alexa to turn on and off lights, adjust thermostats, and more, from the start, making the smart home experience simpler than ever.”
Lennar’s homes are the first in the world to be built according to the new Wi-Fi CERTIFIED Home Design standard. Wi-Fi CERTIFIED Home Design brings a standardized approach to new residential Wi-Fi network design to help ensure whole-home connectivity, with no dead spots, that works seamlessly with thousands of wireless devices and services.
“Wi-Fi connects people to each other and the wider world,” said Kevin Robinson, Wi-Fi Alliance vice president of marketing. “Lennar is to be commended for setting a new standard in home design and construction with Wi-Fi CERTIFIED Home Design, bringing professionally designed and preinstalled Wi-Fi networks to new homes around the country – all under a program that delivers connectivity, coverage and performance standards.”
Lennar’s Wi-Fi CERTIFIED home designs represent the first broad residential installation of Ruckus Unleashed™ Wi-Fi access points and ICX® switching. As a leader in enterprise-grade Wi-Fi, Ruckus is providing each Lennar home with high-performance—yet flexible and reliable—Smart Wi-Fi technology. Ruckus Unleashed™ controller-less Wi-Fi is an affordable wireless LAN solution that can be deployed in minutes, making it ideal for a national homebuilder like Lennar, which builds tens of thousands of homes every year, at an entry-level price that makes it ideal for residential installation.
“Lennar’s bold vision for the future of homebuilding recognizes the essential role Wi-Fi plays in daily life,” said Dan Rabinovitsj, Chief Operating Officer of Ruckus, a part of Brocade. “Ruckus is proud to connect Lennar homebuyers to a world of possibility unleashed by powerful whole-home Wi-Fi at a residential price point that has never been possible, until now.”
During the design of Lennar Wi-Fi CERTIFIED home designs, every floor plan is subjected to a rigorous process that includes mapping Wi-Fi signal strength and quality – taking in to consideration building materials and other factors that can affect connectivity. That determines the placement of Ruckus Unleashed access points, which are built right into the home during construction.
Lennar will begin offering Wi-Fi CERTIFIED home designs next month, rolling out to the entirety of its national footprint by year’s end.
Features include:
- The world’s first Wi-Fi CERTIFIED Home Design – no more dead spots;
- Voice control by Alexa-enabled products;
- Whole-home automation by Samsung SmartThings;
- iOS and Android compatibility;
- Smart home products from the most trusted manufacturers – including Ring, Honeywell, Baldwin, Kwikset, Lutron, Ruckus and Sonos;
- White-glove activation and service.
“We live in a connected world, but most existing homes simply weren’t built for that world – leading to frustrating dead spots,” said Kaiserman. “By engineering state-of-the-art Wi-Fi right into the design and construction of every new Lennar home the way we do plumbing and ventilation – and then bringing it to life with Amazon Alexa – families will be able to enjoy a connected lifestyle to the fullest.”
About Lennar
Lennar Corporation, founded in 1954, is one of the nation’s largest builders of quality homes for all generations. The Company builds affordable, move-up and retirement homes primarily under the Lennar brand name. Lennar’s Financial Services segment provides mortgage financing, title insurance and closing services for both buyers of the Company’s homes and others. Lennar’s Rialto segment is a vertically integrated asset management platform focused on investing throughout the commercial real estate capital structure. Lennar’s Multifamily segment is a nationwide developer of high-quality multifamily rental properties. Previous press releases and further information about the Company may be obtained at the “Investor Relations” section of the Company’s website, www.lennar.com.
