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Smart Homes Should Feel Effortless with Rex Aguirre - The Mic Hamptons Podcast · Mic Hamptons Podcast: Hamptons Real Estate & the People Behind It

• 0:00
  Mike Petersohn: Hi, I'm Mike Peterson from Brown Harris Stevens. The Hamptons runs on relationships and over the years, I've built a network of top tier professionals who operate at the highest level. Mike Hamptons is your access point to that world, the people, the insights, and the opportunities behind it all.
• 0:26
  Mike Petersohn: Hi, welcome to another episode of the Mike Hamptons Podcast powered by hngli.com, the Hamptons Networking Group. We are a group, just to remind everybody, of about 34 people now, a variety of professions. And it ranges from everything from master plumber to real estate attorney, personal injury attorney. And today, I'm really excited to have a close friend, one of the original founders of the group, and the wizard of all things home electronics, Rex Aguirre. Welcome aboard.
• 1:02
  Rex Aguirre: Thank you, Mike. I appreciate it. Thank you for the warm introduction.
• 1:07
  Mike Petersohn: It'll go south quickly. You'll see.
• 1:09
  Rex Aguirre: Okay.
• 1:10
  Mike Petersohn: So going back in the way back machine, Rex and I met each other in a networking group in Manhattan. And that was what a great group of people. And these guys were just business, business, business, just what a great group of professionals. And I was the real estate seat from the Hamptons, and it was just really hard for me to get up at 03:45 in the morning to catch the 05:30 from Monconcoma to be at the Cornell club every Wednesday. But it was worth it.
• 1:39
  But at some point, we decided, shouldn't we just do this in the Hamptons? And so we worked together on that, and now we're three odd years into it, and we've gone from three people sitting in the basement of Brown Harris to 34 people and growing. So that's all good. But this isn't about me, this is about you. So your company is Premier Systems Design.
• 2:09
  You have a military background. That's how you got into this?
• 2:13
  Rex Aguirre: Not necessarily. I actually got into this. I've always been attracted to technology, to computers even as a kid. So when I enlisted into the United States Army, my military occupational specialty just happened to be that I'd be perfect for communications. So that's where I got some background in communications while in the Army.
• 2:46
  Mike Petersohn: Okay. Yeah. All right. So ex military, then you get into home automation. So maybe tell us a little bit about just at a high level.
• 2:58
  I've got a lot of questions for you about Premier, but tell us So a little bit about
• 3:03
  Rex Aguirre: I started off as an IT consultant many years ago, back in the late '90s. And in 2000, I had started my own my own firm and then was doing, computer consulting, IT consulting at that time. And then, you know, Michael Dell came out with the $500 computer. We were selling I was selling hardware back then as well, doing you know, targeting small to mid sized businesses. And what happened was once Dell started rolling out that $500 computer, I said, okay, it's time to kind of switch things up a little bit.
• 3:43
  So we first got started with doing video surveillance. We started getting, I started getting contacted by, a long company, believe it or not, and they were reaching out and saying, hey, we, right, this was at the transition of the time lapse VCRs to now digital or digital video recorders. They did they needed somebody to help them set set that up, configure their network, open up ports on their routers, things like that. And, so that's kinda how I got started. Started with video surveillance, and then started doing alarm systems, then audio, then video, and then full automation.
• 4:28
  Okay.
• 4:28
  Mike Petersohn: Yeah. I've been to a number of the homes that you've worked on, some remarkably beautiful homes, and of course, my home. But they're not quite as beautiful, but there you go, all good. So when people hear Smart Home, what are they usually missing or not understanding?
• 4:55
  Rex Aguirre: Smart Home, essentially it's really just a centralized system that allows multiple different, say, third parties, whether it be climate control or lighting controls, we tie everything into one system, making it then a smart home, allowing the client to be able to control everything either by voice control or from an app or from a keypad inside their home, yeah.
• 5:25
  Mike Petersohn: We're all three. So I'm I'm leaving Manhattan.
• 5:30
  Mike Petersohn: I'm on my way out here. I want
• 5:32
  Mike Petersohn: to turn the heat up. Obviously, can go, Nest. But you have all you have security, lighting, HVAC? What else is
• 5:44
  Rex Aguirre: That's a great question, Mike. So especially this time of year, we have clients that live in New York, live in New Jersey, Upper Westchester. And one thing that everybody asks for is they want to be able to control their heater to their pool. Want to turn that on.
• 6:04
  Mike Petersohn: That's NASA.
• 6:04
  Rex Aguirre: Yeah, they want to turn it on. So they already get a head start on three, four hour commute depending on where they're coming from. Some will say, hey, you know what? They already know they're coming out Friday evening. They'll turn it on Friday morning just to kind of get the head start on getting the pool nice and warm for them and their guests.
• 6:26
  Mike Petersohn: Good to know. Yeah. So I've wrote a bunch of notes prior to you coming in. What should every luxury home in the Hamptons have from a technology standpoint? What is first and foremost in your mind now?
• 6:44
  Rex Aguirre: I would say lighting controls, very popular. And the reason why I say lighting controls is people now they're leave you know, let's say the end of the weekend, everybody's had a great time. Now you're getting ready to leave. People are scrambling. They need you know, they wanna get on the road.
• 7:01
  Having having the lighting controls, being able to press one button and that one button shutting down every single light in the home is, I think, is key. Not only that, I mean, think about the savings if multiple lights are left on a week or two weeks at a time. So yeah, I think it's definitely one of the most important things.
• 7:29
  Mike Petersohn: We had a really rough winter, a lot of snow, which then melted into a lot of basements. There's Andre, who's part of the group who does restoration, was in scores of homes doing restoration this spring. What a great guy, what a great job he does. But it seems to me a lot of those issues could have been avoided with the proper installs as far as sensors being put in place. What do you recommend to homeowners trying to protect a really significant asset?
• 8:04
  Rex Aguirre: So we recommend on all our systems, first and foremost, a temp a temperature sensor that's tied to their alarm system, which is tied to central monitoring, and tied to their, automation system as well. But on top of that, also, we can tie in an automatic border shutoff valve. So now if, let's say, a pipe bursts Amazing. That valve will automatically shut off, saving you know, obviously, there's a lot of, know, think about the amount of money you're saving having something like that in place. And then also being notified saying, Hey, we've shut your water off.
• 8:45
  Mike Petersohn: Yeah. That all makes endless amounts of sense. I'm just trying to think about kind of bouncing around here. When you think about automation heading where
• 8:57
  Rex Aguirre: does it
• 8:57
  Mike Petersohn: go in the next five years? I'm thinking about AI. Like, what's AI doing to change your world right now?
• 9:03
  Rex Aguirre: So AI has definitely been beneficial for the home automation platform. There is a platform called actually Josh AI, and it can get very elaborate. And what's really neat about Josh AI is doesn't, Big Brother's not watching you. This information, whatever information Josh AI collects, it stays in your home. So Josh AI offers that confidentiality, that protection to say, hey, this information is your information.
• 9:34
  We're not to do anything. It's going to remain in your home, on your processor. Interesting. But with that, you can essentially, Josh AI can actually call you or send you a text message and say, hey. Even if someone didn't ring your bell, they could say, hey.
• 9:53
  Mike, we had somebody that was about six foot tall. They were wearing a navy blue, jacket, a white shirt, and jeans. They came to your door but didn't do anything and then left. Here's a snapshot of the video clip of what who came to your door. It's gotten that elaborate now.
• 10:13
  Interesting. Yes. And obviously, that's not a do it yourself You're right.
• 10:21
  Mike Petersohn: Again, I've seen your work. Actually, was going ask another question, the best time to obviously engage with you, your staff, and your company is when someone's breaking ground on a house. You put the foundation in and you can start to wire, make that house ready for the next ten, twenty years of its life. How do you engage with builders on that? Is that something that goes to the architect?
• 10:54
  Is it something you do with the interior designer?
• 10:58
  Rex Aguirre: Would be great to obviously have this conversation with architects. And if not the architects, the builders, or the interior designer, because we really need to be involved in design process, believe it or not. You know, from especially for designing the lighting controls. Walk into how many times did you walk into an $8,000,000 home, Mike, and you see a bank of six, seven switches as you walk in the front door, and you have no idea What do call it? Wall acne?
• 11:35
  Wall acne, exactly. And it just always blows my mind when I walk in and I see something like that, and that just tells me that there was poor planning from the beginning. So why not walk into, this beautiful $8,000,000 home with two gangs with buttons that are actually labeled that are illuminated that tells you, okay. This is actually the outside sconces. It says sconces.
• 12:03
  Yeah. So that's the difference with having a custom you know, doing something right from the beginning with the builder, with the architecture, with the interior.
• 12:10
  Mike Petersohn: Retrofit it.
• 12:11
  Rex Aguirre: Yeah. Exactly.
• 12:12
  Mike Petersohn: You bring in carpenters and painters and everything else, which becomes problematic.
• 12:17
  Rex Aguirre: Right. And it allows us to future proof everything in the beginning because let's say, obviously the builder is not going to want to spend money on automated shades for for, you know, for example. But if we prewire it, now they sell they sell the home, they can say, oh, by the way, the home is already prewired for automated shades. Oh, really? Oh my God.
• 12:40
  I have to sleep with blackouts. So yes, I'm going to want blackouts in every bedroom. Great. We have the technology designer that helped us with this reach out to him and he
• 12:51
  Mike Petersohn: can It's a much lower lift at that point. Right.
• 12:54
  Rex Aguirre: Because we're not opening up walls.
• 12:57
  Mike Petersohn: As a real estate agent in the Hamptons, you develop your friends, I wouldn't say frenemies, but it's coopetition. I find it to be a really congenial group of folks. We're all out for the same purpose. Obviously want to sell homes, buy and sell homes, but also we want our customers to be happy. So definitely feel really happy that I've got a group of agents, internal and external, that we all kind of, hey, I've got a new product come to market.
• 13:29
  It's going be out in three weeks, giving you a heads up. What do you think it's priced at? What do you think they should do better? What do they miss? And I've been in a couple homes recently where builders did a really great job, then they just didn't do a smart home system.
• 13:46
  What were you thinking? And then people will say, Well, why would you price it there? I was like, Well, it's missing certain things. That's something I always highlight. And people go, Oh, yeah, you're right.
• 13:58
  And
• 13:59
  Rex Aguirre: it's funny walking into some of these homes, and we've been in some of them together. You know, that's one of the first things I pick up on. You know? And usually, it's the wall acne that usually slaps me right in right in the right in my face as I walk in the door. But, I think that is important for any, you know, for an any architect or builder, custom home builder, especially out here, you know, sit down and and have a conversation with a technology designer like myself to to say, hey.
• 14:34
  What can we do? What are the offerings here? And believe it or not, the the industry has changed so much that your traditional wiring, a lot of that traditional wiring doesn't even have to happen anymore. I'm even talking about on the electrical side because, so I'll give you an example. Lutron has now their newest fixtures, their Ketra fixtures.
• 14:56
  Those fixtures don't have to be wired traditionally. So the the dimmer is already built into the actual fixture. Okay. And so you can wire it just like you're wiring an outlet. And then each light, you can we can be programmed to be as, you know, part of a zone individually.
• 15:19
  But, again, think about not having to run that switch leg, and you can daisy chain those, throughout the home. So essentially, just as an example, you can have 80 of those recessed lights on one fifteen amp circuit. So this is yeah. So the technology has really changed. And, again, a lot of this is what I've been doing is trying to educate architects and custom home builders to say, hey, listen, there's a new way to do things.
• 15:50
  1,000.
• 15:51
  Mike Petersohn: Yeah. So you mentioned Lutron before. I know that you do with a bunch of different, there's Josh AI, there's Lutron, there's Control4. You work with all of these. It's really customer preference, I'm assuming.
• 16:05
  But maybe I know I've seen you at the D And D Building a couple of times in the city. You're brought in to be a guest speaker and featured there, which I think is a credit to who you are and the business that you do. But can you talk about taking clients to that Lutron experience? Because you do that as well.
• 16:27
  Rex Aguirre: Yes. My team and I have been curating these Lutron tours at their Global Experience Center on East 28th, and then also at the D And D Building on, East 59th. So, being able to walk into that showroom and seeing is believing because a lot of people say, oh, you know, well, how interesting could it be? And once they get there, they can they can touch. They can look and feel.
• 17:02
  Mike Petersohn: Yeah.
• 17:02
  Rex Aguirre: Look at the fabrics. Look at the different options that are available. And going through that tour, really, everyone that I brought there has said, oh my god. Thank you. This was a real eye opener.
• 17:16
  I had no idea that any of this existed or didn't know. I only knew a little bit, but now you've opened my eyes to a lot of it. I mean, Lutron has been around for over fifty years, and they are the leaders in the industry when it comes to lighting control systems. So that is our go to product for when we're designing any home automation systems with lighting controls.
• 17:43
  Mike Petersohn: But again, you're neutral if somebody's really, you know, they grew up with Crestron?
• 17:49
  Rex Aguirre: Crestron. Or Control four. What what's really nice about Lutron is that we Lutron works very well with the automation you know, all of the automation platforms, including Crestron and Control4 and Savant. So you can use Lutron as a standalone system, or you can tie it into a complete home automation system.
• 18:15
  Mike Petersohn: Cool. I'm going to change things up a little bit on you. I thought it'd fun to do a little speed round. Okay. All right.
• 18:21
  So this is my rapid fire section for you. Ready? Okay. Wired or wireless? Wired.
• 18:31
  Interesting. That's stupid. Alright. You got to stop there for a second. You would think in today's world everything would be wireless, but hardwiring is the way to go, if you can.
• 18:41
  Rex Aguirre: Right. So think about this. You're in an 8,000 square foot home and there's 10, there's ten, eleven televisions and you have, aside from those televisions, you have touch screens, you have, your Apple TVs, you have your Roku's, You have devices that actually have to be hardwired. Your receiver, your Sonos, all the all these devices actually have to be hardwired. And if they're not hardwired, now you're relying on a wireless signal, and now you're having, let's say you're having ten, fifteen people over, wireless signal Degrade.
• 19:17
  Starts significantly. Yeah.
• 19:25
  Mike Petersohn: Okay. Next. Ready? Favorite smart home feature personally? The
• 19:32
  Rex Aguirre: lighting controls. Having the one button that can give you be highly programmable to do a series of events.
• 19:40
  Mike Petersohn: What is the most overhyped technology that you see? Overhyped?
• 19:50
  Rex Aguirre: That's a good one. I would say the do it yourself voice control. Overhyped.
• 19:59
  Mike Petersohn: Okay. That's interesting to know. One smart device everyone should own.
• 20:05
  Rex Aguirre: I think everyone should own a one smart device that everyone should own. At least a wireless speaker.
• 20:17
  Mike Petersohn: Got it. Craziest client request ever.
• 20:23
  Rex Aguirre: Oh, that's a good one.
• 20:24
  Mike Petersohn: You can tell I didn't pregame record. Yeah.
• 20:27
  Rex Aguirre: That was a good
• 20:28
  Mike Petersohn: one. What
• 20:29
  Rex Aguirre: was the craziest client request? Actually, so we had a client ask us. So he has his and her bathrooms. And we had a client ask us to put a television over his toilet bowl. Above?
• 20:51
  Behind him for some reason. Okay. But that's a true story. We'll leave
• 20:57
  Mike Petersohn: it at that.
• 20:59
  Mike Petersohn: Okay, then we
• 21:04
  Mike Petersohn: movie theater or outdoor entertainment system? You had a choice.
• 21:11
  Rex Aguirre: Outdoor entertainment system.
• 21:13
  Mike Petersohn: I've seen a couple that you've done that are just amazing. House, fun.
• 21:19
  Rex Aguirre: Yeah, because you're out there in the open air. You want to watch the game and still get to enjoy the outside air, the environment. It's perfect, especially this time of year.
• 21:36
  Mike Petersohn: So my favorite story about getting to know you was when your wife we were having drinks with your wife once, and she said, You guys met. You were on, like, the Great South Bay. She was on a boat, you know, having cocktails, having a good time. And she looked up, there was this handsome devil on a jet ski racing across the Great South Bay going sixty, seventy miles an hour, and pulls up and pulls his James Bond and jumps onto the boat and hangs out for drinks, and she said, I'm in.
• 22:08
  Rex Aguirre: That's my oh, my god. That is my wife's favorite story. When we first met, we hadn't met yet, but she had been on a boat. And she says, oh, yeah. My friend's going to meet us out here.
• 22:23
  He's coming on his jet ski. What? How is he going to find us? Oh, don't worry. He'll find us.
• 22:30
  And sure enough, I caught up with them right in the middle of the Great South Bay. And, that's a funny story.
• 22:36
  Mike Petersohn: Beautiful. Well, I'm going to wrap it up there and just say thank you for coming in. It's always a pleasure. Always the best dressed guy in H and G.
• 22:46
  Rex Aguirre: Thank you. Thank you. You for having me, Mike. This was phenomenal.
• 22:51
  Mike Petersohn: It's all good. So if people, for some crazy reason, wanted to get in touch with you, could you could you let them know how?
• 22:59
  Rex Aguirre: If someone needs to get in touch with you, you can reach me at, Premier Systems Design. Premier spelled p r e m I e r e, Systems Design dot com, or on, Instagram at PSD Smart Home, or you can reach me on, at the office at (212) 518-4002. Thanks.
• 23:20
  Mike Petersohn: So you guys are from Montauk to Manhattan and And beyond. And beyond. And you've done stuff.
• 23:26
  Rex Aguirre: You've gotten Yeah, actually from Maine to North Carolina.
• 23:31
  Mike Petersohn: It's amazing. And you do great work. Again, I've seen many examples of it. Thank you. I want to just say thank you.
• 23:40
  So thank you again for tuning into another episode of the Mike Hamptons Podcast. This is powered by the H and G, Hamptons Networking Group that Rex and I helped to found. So hngli.com is our website. This is where deals happen, and if you ever are in need of any help, request, information, anything, all things real estate in The Hamptons, remember, I know a guy. See you on the next one.
• 24:07
  Mike Petersohn: Hey, this is Michael. Thanks for listening to Mike Hamptons, powered by the Hamptons Networking Group, where the right people make the right things happen. If you're planning anything in The Hamptons, buying, selling, building, hosting, or investing, don't do it alone. Tap into our network of vetted top tier service providers who get things done at the highest level. And if real estate is part of your plan, I bring deep knowledge, strong network, and a track record of getting deals done the right way.
• 24:39
  Reach out anytime. We'll see you on the next one. You can call, text, or DM me right now or visit my website to get connected. I work with a tight network and the best deals go to the people who move first. Don't forget to subscribe.
• 24:52
  I'll see you on the next deal. Keep making moves.