In this weeks “The Voice for Real Estate” we learn about a lab in the NAR building in Chicago that is studying smart home devices with the aim of making them better. The goal is to test the devices and make recommendations to manufacturers and research institutions on what would make the devices better from a real estate professional’s standpoint.

The video also looks at the surge in existing-home sales in December, the life sentence handed down to the killer of an Arkansas real estate agent, and recent court rulings on so-called ephemeral messaging, which is text messaging through apps like Snapchat that go away after a few seconds.