As cities continue to grow more densely populated - with an increasing demand from young professionals and workers wanting to move to an urban environment for both the social and job opportunities it affords – environmental concerns are continuing to grow. Innovative property developers are already hard at work on solutions for the future of real estate/property investment in cities around the UK.
Here’s some more information on some of the growth in eco-friendly property development throughout the UK, including some of the successful developments that are already ongoing, and the features that the buildings of the future will increasingly look to introduce.
Eco-friendly features in property
Properties in the coming months and years will increasingly have a range of different fixtures, facilities and features that innovate in ways to reuse the energy that they’re generating, or collect alternative energy sources in order to benefit the environment.
ELEMENT – The Quarter, for instance, a forward-thinking eco development from ELEMENT Developments, features not only a range of luxury on-site facilities (including a 24 hour concierge service, a games room, cinema room, and dedicated gymnasium), but also low-carbon smart technologies throughout in an aim to be as energy efficient as possible. These technologies include LED lighting, air source heat pumps that absorb outside air to heat the building and provide hot water to tenants, solar paneling, and even a system for collecting and recycling rainwater.
With young people becoming increasingly conscious of the environment and wanting to make changes in their lifestyle, eco-friendly apartments and homes are again only going to become more popular in the years to come. Savvy investors getting involved in eco-properties early will likely reap the rewards as others in the property industry follow suit towards an eco-driven future.
These potential benefits of course come on top of those offered by the growth stats and percentages in some of the best cities in the UK. RWinvest report in their many guides that Liverpool is perhaps the best city in the country for buy to let investment, not only topping the charts for rental yield percentages but also looking promising with the amount of regeneration and future development planned.
The ‘Smart’ Building
The ‘internet of things’ concept is something that has already taken off on a consumer level. Products such as the Amazon Echo and Google Home products, and the devices that they can be networked with to control – such as smart lighting, heating and security products – are already extremely popular with technophobes and tech enthusiasts alike. Apple, Google and Amazon are consistently updating their product lines in anticipation for sales and holidays, and the market has been expected to grow by over 20% in 2021 as more people invite the technology into their homes.
The ‘Smart Building’ is an idea in property development that looks to take these sorts of tech-driven features to the next level. Interwoven within a development from the get-go (rather than tacked on later down the line at a consumer level), these sorts of buildings will be easily controllable with a sort of centralized ‘brain’, allowing for automation and ease-of-access to heating systems, lighting systems, security and more. Of course, this additional level of efficiency and control will mean good news for energy efficiency and loss, and there is also again opportunity for energy to be recycled into different places depending on where it is being generated/wasted. Not only that, but buildings will also even be able to communicate with each other, transferring information on things like weather, events, and even extreme hazards (such as neighboring fires or earthquakes).
