The implementation of smart technologies in the built environment poses many new issues to the real estate sector. Among these issues is behavioural control of building occupants thanks to increasingly sophisticated smart real estate’s technological apparatus. Behavioural control in digital space (e.g., the internet) has generated passionate arguments about human dignity. Stances founded on technology or ethics foster a Manichean perspective, either by focusing on technological innovation and ignoring the negative consequences of embedding smart technology in human lives for the former, or by condemning the very use of digital technology altogether in the name of human freedom for the latter. By doing so, they tend to obscure our ability to rationally assess the impact of technology on space users in smart buildings. This paper applies an economic approach to determine the nature of control in smart real estate and proposes the blueprint for a code of digital governance in the real estate sector. Based on Lecomte (2019, 2020, 2021), it concludes by ascertaining the need for regulators to step in, for instance through tougher ad hoc privacy laws designed for the built environment.