February is short but rarely sweet, weather-wise, and this year has proved to be no exception. I tend to lose track of which named storm we’re currently being battered by, but one of them was certainly making its presence felt last Sunday, chez nous. A proposed walk on the beach had reluctantly been abandoned in favour of taking refuge in the living room, with my wife watching some obscure channel on the telly while I did some essential internet research (Autotrader if you must know), the rain lashing noisily against the French windows outside.
Unlike my children, I’m not able to watch eight screens simultaneously, and so I found myself being distracted by the programme that Mrs C was watching. It was an old Channel 4 series called ‘The 1900 House’, and at face value, it should have been no competition for Autotrader. Yet I found myself watching it in some amazement. The premise was simple – the thoroughly modern participants would live in a house modified to resemble a typical home of the late Victorian era, and they would be made to live like Victorians for around three months, meaning they had precisely zero modern conveniences. There were no toilets or hot running water, and the participants seemed to spend their entire day washing and pressing clothes, yet they were unable to wash themselves. How on earth did they get anything done?
Obviously, we all take our mod cons for granted, and only the occasional power cut forces us to appreciate how much we rely on the labour-saving devices of modern daily life. The last time we had an outage, I recall my daughter lit some candles before announcing she’d go online to see if she could find any news about when the electricity would come back on. This greatly amused my wife, who reminded her that the internet router ran on electricity and then promptly announced she’d go and put the kettle on while we waited, which caused further merriment. After dinner, we’d washed up the plates in the sink, which had taken me right back to my childhood but was clearly a novel experience for my daughter, who is firmly from the post-dishwasher age.
And, of course, technology continues to make great strides in making life easier and more convenient for all humankind. Self-driving cars, robotic lawnmowers, and artificial intelligence all take the strain so that we don’t have to, and we’ve got used to having solutions at the press of a button. Property development and investment have certainly not been immune to the thrust of technological innovation. In the last few years, many apps and platforms have sprung up that promise to make searching for information – and indeed, searching for deals – far easier, albeit at a cost. As a property development trainer, I frequently get asked by my students whether these tools should have a place in a developer or investor’s armoury. So, what’s the right answer?
