Two themes come to mind after talking to exhibitors, developers, policy makers and advisers at this year’s LREF, writes Clive Pane, planning and development partner at Deloitte.
The first is that the aspiration to deliver more homes at an affordable price in London remains, quite rightly, at the top of the agenda for policy makers and public sector landowners. Indeed, the various speeches and presentations delivered so far by many of our most senior industry leaders suggest that the desire to deliver is moving from aspiration to desperation. I think all of us involved in the industry feel and understand this.
I have heard little that suggests that the primary blockages to housing delivery – planning complexities, lack of sufficient funding for local infrastructure, CPO delays and so on – will change anytime soon. So I am putting the clamour over housing down as “more of the same”. Don’t bet on London’s long-term growth rate of more than 7% pa changing any time soon.
But I have come across something of the new (to me at least). While standing by the London model, Ed Greig, disruptor at Deloitte Digital, presented on how analytics and robotics are changing (sorry, have changed) real estate.
With a spark in his eye, Ed explained to me that it is now possible to scan design plans for a house and turn them into a super-realistic virtual reality walk-through in 60 seconds – thus allowing the buyer/occupier to wander through the house and chose the interior layout and fittings. When the house has been chosen, hit print and have it delivered, by a very big 3D printer, 24 hours later.
It’s the combination of all of this technology that provides such exciting potential to change the way we peruse and buy, and how we will design and deliver buildings in the very near future.
The robots have definitely arrived. Best of all, the total cost of delivering a small house in this way is under £15,000.
