Smart Homes Fill With Devices Owners Never Install

The smart home's dirtiest statistic is not a hack or an outage. It is the unopened box, and one in five owners has one.

In Vivint's 2026 How We Home survey of 5,000 U.S. homeowners, 78 percent own at least one smart home device and 61 percent bought one in the past year, yet 22 percent have purchased a device they never installed. [Business Wire via FinancialContent — Vivint's How We Home Report reveals what homeowners want from their smart homes (November 5, 2026)]

The abandonment numbers run alongside the adoption numbers. Nearly half of owners have at least one device they rarely or never use, and the never-installed fifth is the industry's quiet returns-and-regret problem: the purchase is easy, the ladder, the wiring and the app pairing are not. Vivint's report, in its second year, points at professional installation as one of the things owners say they want, which is also, not coincidentally, a thing Vivint sells. [Business Wire via FinancialContent — Vivint's How We Home Report reveals what homeowners want from their smart homes (November 5, 2026)]

The motives are consistent across the survey. Security leads: 46 percent of homeowners are more concerned about theft than they were five years ago, and a third have spent $300 or more on home security in the past five years. Energy follows: 59 percent report higher energy bills over the past year, 63 percent are more concerned about energy costs than five years ago, and 37 percent already use smart devices to manage and track consumption. A fourth theme is care: 42 percent are caring for a family member or expect to be within five years. [Business Wire via FinancialContent — Vivint's How We Home Report reveals what homeowners want from their smart homes (November 5, 2026)]

The methodology belongs in the reading. OnePoll surveyed 5,000 U.S. homeowners online in September 2026, commissioned by Vivint, and the findings are reported experiences and opinions. The survey does not measure verified utility savings, and a vendor of professionally installed systems framing installation as the gap is a conclusion to weigh accordingly. The uninstalled-device figure, though, cuts against the seller as much as for it, which lends it a certain credibility. [Business Wire via FinancialContent — Vivint's How We Home Report reveals what homeowners want from their smart homes (November 5, 2026)]

The industry's next contest is visible in the gap between 78 percent ownership and the unused-device pile. The first decade of the smart home was won on shelf appeal; the report describes owners asking for the unglamorous second half, devices that get installed, integrated and actually used. Whoever closes the distance between the box and the wall owns the market the first wave created.