I have a client that is move from ct to ca. He wants to take parts of the system.

I think he should try and sell the whole system intact and take the money and start fresh out there.

Do you tell clients to sell the gear with house?

Yes, I encourage clients to leave as much “obsolete” equipment with the house as possible. I explain that the equipment may have been state of the art two or three years ago, but it is now so obsolete that bits and pieces will be difficult to deal with in the new setting. Of course, there may be exceptions — such as Sonos and devices containing music and film libraries.

If you have a high end control, network, and power management installed, it might be tempting to ship that to the new location, but will the current system work without these components? Are you going out to CA to set-up the system? If these components are shipped, the customer will need to find an installer who can work with all of the components, not just a few.

Sell the System with the House. ALWAYS!

Had one client remove the controller, left the speakers, and keypads.

I explained that what he took was of no use, since the system was no longer being made.

Got it back and gave it to the new homeowner, who became a great client. Better than the jerkoff that was a client...

People who take stuff break the system making it a pile of trash...and then spend more trying to use it in their new house.

The equipment is used. That aside, it will never have the value for the new homeowner that it had for the original owner. Sell it with the house but don't expect to get more than 20% -- my guess -- of its value.

This will clear the client for a new system at the new place. Push how that will expand their personal choices and their enjoyment.

Depends on what he has.

Ultimately, its up to the homeowner. I may recommend he leave it behind, but lets face it, out systems generally dont add any value to a home so if he can reasonably use it in the new home, have at it. Hopefully, I'll have the opportunity to sell to the new homeowner.

If they are moving out of your territory, encourage them to take as much gear as possible and have them leave your card on the refrigerator.

If the client is moving to a new house still in your area, leave everything behind and buy new stuff for the new house. An established customer is always better than building s new customer. 😀

Tell him that he's taking equivalent of an engine out of an out if production car.
- it'll cost him money to take it out
- it'll cost him more money to pack it, ship it, store it
- new homeowner won't be able to use the system without it, which in some states is illegal (to show working house and disable it after the sale)
- most importantly, he might not be able to use it at new house because he won't have a complete system, new dealer will charge him more to try to piece it back together than it would cost to just buy new.

On the other hand, you'll make more money removing old gear for old homeowner and installing new gear for new homeowner

Obviously leave anything built in items like speakers. No problem taking normal living room type components, free standing speakers and TV's. Would leave intact any control system that operates normal household systems such as lighting. Unless they have a conventional switch of some sort that operates normally. Sales contract better state what you are removing as well.

It's hard to know if the new homeowner will appreciate the system- some might, some will want it to be gone, so they can build a new one that reflects their immense knowledge of technology and making its operation difficult. Ask the existing homeowner if they'll be selling anything before they go and if so, offer to find current value for the components so they can be sold at the same time. Then, be available to remove it and make your name and service offerings known during the sale.

The daughter of one of my clients moved back to the area and when they found a house, the Russound conrol unit was gone, but they left the keypads. It was there when they looked at the house and they had photos of it. I told them to ask the realtor about it and he admitted that it was there without saying "I took it" and said he'd return what was there. He left a low end Pioneer AVR with dented case and an 'Open box' sticker from Best Buy.

As long as its not attached to the home (like in wall speakers) or disable other systems like HVAC or lighting, its all personal property and doesnt need to be listed in the contract. Its no different than taking your furniture.

I've witnessed 3 sales in the last few months where everything conveyed with the house except for the dishes, linens and towels. I had to do an AV inventory at one home where the new owners didn't care at all about the AV gear, but wanted it left in place. People are just weird.

I have looked at two houses in the past few years that had extensive Crestron systems that came with them.

Both were calls to tone out wiring so that cable boxes could be placed at local tvs, bypassing the DM/Sonnex systems.
One house had a dead processor, entire place was automated. They had replaced the thermostats with non Crestron units and had lamps in every room because lighting was offline.
They had zero interest in fixing it.

Another house that I had done years back had changed hands was now owned by a Chinese family. The previous homeowner took all the Crestron remotes but left the rest of the system.
There was a beautiful dedicated theater room in this house, all McIntosh, Runco and Crestron.
They wanted me to light up a coax at the front of the room for their 70something inch Visio tv that they had on a table in front of the screen. I tried to talk them into bringing the room back to life, even went so far as to manually turn everything on to show them that it worked. Explained that all things considered, it would cost all that much to get it up and running and how much the equipment in the house cost.
Their response "why we do that, we pay you $100 to hook up cable box, that already too much money". Keep in mind this was about a $5.5 million house.

Ra

A black comic actor moved into a house, renting for a while to see if he wanted to buy it, about ten feet from the ocean in Malibu. The house came with a Crestron system. We determined that the original installer was in the wind, so what was there would stay.

He thought he would LOVE the Crestron system as it was, but when he turned on the system in the living room and hit DANCE HITS, he got C & W classics. Changed to Urban beat, got Bluegrass. I could not have made up the exact changes that the cable company had made to the music channels except to say that he had zero clue how to get to ANY of the channels he wanted to listen to. We made up a chart that was taped to the wall next to each controller.

He decided not to buy the house because it was too far from work, but that Crestron situation just reminded me of all the reasons why it would be nice to be able to load Crestron programming from the devices, then modify it to suit.