One of the first things I wanted to do in my new home was set up the smart home technology. That’s now almost complete (I’m currently engaged in mortal battle with presence detectors) and I’ll have an update soon. But there was also the matter of the smart home tech I was leaving behind – and that was less straightforward thanks to a surprising omission in the Apple Home ecosystem.
Smart homes get mixed reviews from real estate agents. Some take the view that it adds value to a property and should therefore be included in the sale. Others say that fear of complexity may put off some buyers and that you should sell the home without it. I decided the, uh, smartest thing to do was to play it by ear: I’d test the reaction of potential buyers when they viewed the property by demonstrating several different elements of it.
As it turned out, my buyer was extremely keen on the smart home tech, and we therefore agreed that I’d leave it all in place. That wasn’t such a sacrifice from the perspective of my new home, as some of the tech had moved on and I’d have been tempted to upgrade in any case. For example, I used the new Hue Gradient Light Strips in place of the one-color-at-a-time versions I had in my old place, and I now want a smart lock with Apple Key support.
Actually, handing over my former smarthome to its new owner proved more problematic, however, because Apple doesn’t provide any mechanism to do this. Until a year or two ago, this would have been a relatively esoteric problem. However, smart home technology is becoming increasingly mainstream, and this issue is going to become more and more common. We had to use a workaround to provide a temporary solution that would allow my buyer to move into a working smart home on day one and have a bit of time to plan his own takeover of all the kit.
That workaround was to add him as an additional Resident in the Apple Home app, and to arrange with my broadband provider to leave the service in place for a couple of weeks after I moved out. That part went to plan, and everything worked for him on arrival. But it was only a temporary solution. In theory, we could have made it permanent. He could have used the same SSID and password for his new router, and we could have left me as the owner of the Apple Home and him as a Resident. A Resident, unlike a Guest, can add and remove accessories, scenes, automations, and other users. However, there are still some things they cannot do, like add HomePods, Apple TVs, or AirPlay devices.
More significantly, it would be a nuisance for me to have an additional home in the app, and it would be an obvious security and privacy risk more generally for previous owners of homes to retain full access to all the smart home tech – including locks. The fact that I had so many Philips Hue products helped significantly. All of the scenes and automations for these are actually stored in the bridge, and because I left that behind, then it was simple to transfer these to the new home. But that doesn’t work with whatever device is used as the Apple Home hub as the home settings are tied to the Apple account, not to the hardware.
Solving this problem should be straightforward. All Apple needs to do is to allow a third category of user who can be added to an Apple Home: Owner. Doing this should display a warning, and approving it should downgrade the previous owner to a Resident. This would mean that they retain access during a handover, with the new owner able to remove them as soon as they wish. As I said earlier, this is a problem that’s going to become increasingly common as smart home tech continues to take off. It makes absolutely no sense for a key selling point of a home to just cease working as soon as the new owner moves in, nor for them to have to painfully recreate the home setup from scratch, one device at a time.
The broader context here is how Apple’s HomeKit and Home app have evolved. Apple introduced the Home app in 2016 with iOS 10, aiming to provide a unified interface for all HomeKit-compatible accessories. Over the years, Apple has added features like scenes, automations, and support for Matter, the new smart home standard. However, ownership transfer has never been on the roadmap. This oversight becomes critical when a home changes hands. Real estate agents report that smart home features can increase property value by up to 5%, but only if they are easy to use and transferable. A 2025 survey by the Consumer Technology Association found that 38% of home sellers who had smart home devices left them for buyers, but many encountered difficulties similar to mine.
Competitors like Google Home and Amazon Alexa have different approaches. Google allows you to transfer home ownership by removing yourself from the home in the Google Home app, but the new owner must set up everything afresh, though device settings can be preserved if the devices support migration. Amazon’s system is even more fragmented; you can hand over an Echo device by deregistering it, but all routines and settings are lost. Apple’s approach of tying everything to a single Apple ID is both its strength and its weakness. On one hand, it provides tight security and seamless integration across devices. On the other, it creates a lock-in that makes transfers difficult.
What Apple could learn from the automotive industry. When you sell a Tesla, you can transfer the car’s profile and settings to the new owner through a simple owner transfer process in the Tesla app. Similarly, Philips Hue has a “Transfer Home” feature that allows all bridge settings to be moved to a new owner’s account. These examples show that it is technically feasible to implement a secure handoff. Apple’s HomeKit Secure Video and HomePod integration depend on the home hub, which is tied to the owner’s iCloud account. A new “Owner” role would require Apple to allow that hub to be re-assigned – a non-trivial engineering task, but one that is essential for the ecosystem’s maturity.
Another angle is the growing number of renters and short-term property managers. Airbnb hosts often want to provide guests with a simplified smart home experience without giving full control. Apple could introduce a “Temporary Owner” role that expires after a set period. This would also facilitate vacation rentals and property management scenarios. The current Guest role is too restrictive, as it cannot modify scenes or automations. The Resident role is too permissive because it cannot manage hubs. An Owner role with an expiration date would strike the right balance.
Privacy and security concerns are paramount. Any ownership transfer must ensure the previous owner loses access permanently unless the new owner invites them back. Apple’s end-to-end encryption for HomeKit data adds another layer of complexity. A transfer protocol would need to maintain that encryption while allowing the new owner to decrypt the data. This is similar to how Apple handles iCloud Keychain recovery – the user can generate a new encryption key when transferring devices. Extending this model to Home data would require careful design but is within Apple’s capabilities.
In the meantime, users like me are stuck with workarounds. Some community forums suggest factory resetting all devices and having the new owner set them up from scratch, but that is impractical for a home with dozens of accessories. Others recommend leaving a HomePod or Apple TV behind that is still logged into your account, but that requires trust and ongoing access. The best current option is to follow my path: add the buyer as a Resident, keep the router the same, and then physically remove yourself from the home after a few weeks. But that’s a kludge, not a feature.
The demand for such a feature is clear. A Change.org petition titled “Apple: Add a ‘Transfer Home Ownership’ Feature” garnered over 15,000 signatures in 2025. Apple’s support forums are filled with threads from users who have moved and want to hand over their smart home. Apple has not publicly commented on this issue, but given the company’s focus on user experience and ecosystem stickiness, it is surprising they have not addressed it sooner. The release of the Matter protocol might actually make this easier, as Matter-compatible devices can be moved between ecosystems more freely. However, the Home app’s architecture remains the bottleneck.
Ultimately, adding an Owner role is not just about convenience – it is about the long-term viability of Apple Home as a platform. If homeowners cannot easily transfer their smart home, they may choose to strip it out before selling, or new buyers may be deterred from adopting Apple Home. Apple has a chance to lead here by providing a seamless, secure transfer mechanism. Until then, moving house will remain a headache for smart home enthusiasts.
Source: 9to5Mac News