As the UK considers its own future in or out of the European Union, proptech blogger and housing market commentator Rayhan Rafiq-Omar takes a look what real estate, driven by technology, might look like two decades on from a Brexit
It has been 20 years since the United Kingdom exited the EU, opening up this small but wealthy collection of states to massive change.
While some of that upheaval was negative – farmers went out of business en masse as the UK government didn’t fully replace subsidies provided by the common European market – some was more positive – the UK attracted inflows of capital and skilled labour from the most unexpected places across the Commonwealth.
Technologists from India, entrepreneurs from the Caribbean and Pacific Rim and a host of highly skilled workers from Africa and China were welcomed to a UK that saw a massive outflow of people from Europe, afraid of a population that was increasingly anti-Europe in the wake of the European project rapidly unravelling.
Much of what used to be farmland was provided with permitted development rights to create “English villages” linked to the major cities by Hyperloops paid for by the socialist government that was elected soon after then prime minister David Cameron was forced to resign amid an embarrassing referendum defeat.
While the scale of young people flooding to London did not abate, campaigns like Create Streets swayed public opinion with clever use of technology. They used tools like LandInsight to show where streets could be built to increase population density and create lots of mini-Kensingtons across south-east England.
By now generation rent has completed its transformation into generation unmortgage. Their kids, nearing the age when they themselves fly the coop, have less tension about housing thanks to widespread institutional investment in shared ownership.
Britain went from a nation of landlords owning £1.2tn of property and homeowners having £1tn in outstanding mortgage debt, to one with more than £2tn of residential property co-owned alongside pension funds.
Those pension funds weathered another three property recessions thanks to the liability matching characteristic of residential property, which continued to outperform every other asset class through the intervening economic cycles.
Even the two presidential terms of Donald Trump in the US did little to dampen the pace of change in the world away from fossil fuels and into even more intricate globalisation.
The world is now super connected, with the internet beamed from the skies free of charge, bringing the Earth’s populous of 9bn unprecedented levels of prosperity.
E-commerce and intense competition for last mile delivery fulfilment in the £1tn a year logistics industry finally broke the back of paper money, with the world now exchanging electronic currencies at spot rate via a whole host of Mondo-style mobile only banks.
We expect the first colonisation trips to Mars, sponsored by Tesla-X (after the merger of Elon Musk’s various enterprises), to leave Earth this year.
They will take with them the latest biological building materials, which will be grown in the newly found reservoirs on the red planet.
In the ashes of capitalism, socialism’s time did not last very long as the onset of free global internet access brought down many governments across the world – big brother lost his ability to keep track of both people and money.
Much of that money, which used to be kept in old-style banks and under people’s proverbial mattresses, increasingly found its way into real estate.
Sadly, property never became more affordable. But with the world looking toward Mars, few worried about life’s daily grind.
What do you think of Rafiq-Omar’s view of the future of real estate? Tweet us @estatesgazette and @rayhanRESI
