A Texas home sold for $300,000 above asking, and it was still a tight race.
A Boston couple visited about 100 homes in a year. Their only winning offer was $90,000 over asking.
A home in Seattle appraised for $745,000 and sold for $125 million. The buyer didn't even see it in person.
Welcome to America's crazy real estate market.
Anyone is lucky to catch a break here. But even if you're sitting on the sidelines, one of the best stocks to buy now offers a backdoor play with 192% potential.
As stories like these - and hundreds of others - hit home, the real "winner" of this speculative frenzy creeps along in the shadows. It's far from the headlines and well away from the mainstream investing "radar."
Home prices are clearly spiking. But there's a disconnect between those prices and their true "value."
When that happens, a home may not be a smart investment.
And yet, a "smart" home - a living, breathing "data" organism that you can command and control from the screen of your smartphone - may be a brilliant move.
This is true for homebuyers... and for investors like you and me.
Just a few short years ago, "smart homes" were talked about in the same context as flying cars, robotic taxis, groceries by drones, and robot soldiers. These innovations were buzzy and cool to talk about, but they remained very much things of "tomorrow."
But in the blink of an eye, smart homes are becoming normal. Thirty-something millennials are settling down with families, and the more-numerous, tech-savvy Generation Z folks are right behind.
Soon, a smart home will simply be "home."
Innovation leads to opportunity - and there's one company we believe will cash in big.
In fact, we believe shares of this company could triple in the next 12 months.
And the stock will go even higher from there.
If you grab some of these shares today, you'll look back and see you made a "smart" move.
It may even finance a home of your own.
The Real Trend Behind Real Estate Demand
Another way to refer to smart homes could be Internet of Things (IoT). This market is worth just $690 billion in 2019, but it's poised to reach $1.2 trillion by 2025.
That's 73% growth in just six years. And that's likely to compound over the next decade.
IoT represents a push toward connectivity between different everyday objects on the Internet.
For example, imagine programming your phone to alert your ceiling fan to turn on at a certain time to keep you cool at night.
Ever have the nagging feeling you left the garage door open or the oven on? Go to your smart home app and close the garage from miles away.
Imagine your coffee maker starting to brew as soon as you turn off your alarm clock. Or, imagine your thermostat kicking on the heat when it senses your car pulling in the driveway.
If that sounds too much like science fiction, "Alexa, turn up the thermostat" is now a thing.
As you can tell, tech improvements like these are making homeowners' lives easier. And this market is growing fast.
The IoT will come together to create the full "smart home" experience in no time, where everything essentially communicates with everything else.
This company offers just that. It's just starting out, but it's likely to build on an entire ecosystem of smart devices over the next several years.
This could be like buying Tesla at $50.
Here's the growth stock with 192% potential this year...
The Best Smart Home Stock to Buy
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Vivint Smart Home Inc. (NYSE: VVNT) could potentially double or triple in the next 12 months.
Vivint aspires to be the go-to source for home automation solutions. For now, many know the company for its smart home security solutions.
Vivint offers remote-controlled door locks. You can control your garage door from your phone, and the company sells exterior and interior cameras, doorbell cameras, sensors, etc.
Additionally, Vivint makes smart thermostats, smart lighting systems, car trackers, and alarms. And it's all controlled through one app. Plus, you can integrate it into Amazon Echo or Google Home.
Currently, Vivint serves more than 1.5 million customers in the United States and Canada. That number is growing - the company was even on the Fast Company World's 50 Most Innovative Companies list in 2017.
That's because Vivint is spearheading a foundational shift in how people think about home. And it starts with the most obvious: home safety, the ability to see your doorstep through an app on your phone, from anywhere in the world.
Vivint has the potential to take up more space in even more homes in North America. As a major contender for dominating the smart home industry alongside Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) and Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN), its market cap will almost certainly not stay at the current $2.4 billion.
You can buy Vivint stock for just $11.62 today. The average analyst target is $23.33, which is a more than 100% gain from today's price. But the high analyst target for the year is $34, a 192% gain, or almost triple what it is today.
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About the Author
Mike Stenger, Associate Editor for Money Morning at Money Map Press, graduated from the Perdue School of Business at Salisbury University. He has combined his degree in Economics with an interest in emerging technologies by finding where tech and finance overlap. Today, he studies the cybersecurity sector, AI, streaming, and the Cloud.