'Hey Google, dim the lights': how smart home devices can save money

From energy-saving bulbs to leak detectors, smart tech offers many benefits at the touch of a button

Almost everything in your home, from lights and thermostats to door locks and security cameras, can now be connected to the internet. With a few taps on an app or a voice command you can turn down your heating, let visitors into your home or check for leaks.

But while many of these gadgets appear to be simply a way to impress visitors (“Hey Google, dim the lights and play some romantic music”), others can save you money. And at a time when many of us are working from home and running up bills during the day, this is likely to be their biggest selling point.

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Ten tips for adding water to your garden Nottingham Estate Agents

There’s nothing more soothing and relaxing than the presence and sound of gently running water in the garden.   Whether it’s a tranquil reflective pool or a fountain, water can add a wonderful sense of serenity to any outdoor space, providing lovely movement and sound. But there are other benefits to being around water, too.  Much […]

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Homes on a hillside for sale – in pictures

From historic town houses perched on a steep city street, to a villa on the slopes of the Malvern Hills

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Country diary: one lone earwig stands her ground in the logpile

Langstone, Hampshire: She guards a clutch of 40 eggs with a maternal care that is unusual among insects

Hidden away in a damp, shady corner at the foot of my fence, a half-metre-high heap of logs and leaves has rotted down to rich humus, the few remaining tree stumps and branches pitted with insect boreholes.

As I turn over a partially buried tunnel of bark, woodlice scatter, a cluster of garden and brown-lipped snails shrink back into their banded shells, and a common cryptops centipede scuttles for cover.

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Lessons property seekers in lockdown can learn from past moves Nottingham Estate Agents

Many would-be property buyers are spending time online looking at potential purchases for when lockdown is over. On behalf of OnTheMarket, Stephen Ward, director of strategy and external relations at the Council for Licensed Conveyancers (CLC), considers why now is a good time for these property seekers to look at what they can learn from […]

The post Lessons property seekers in lockdown can learn from past moves appeared first on OnTheMarket.com blog.

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Country diary: one lone earwig stands her ground in the logpile

Langstone, Hampshire: She guards a clutch of 40 eggs with a maternal care that is unusual among insects

Hidden away in a damp, shady corner at the foot of my fence, a half-metre-high heap of logs and leaves has rotted down to rich humus, the few remaining tree stumps and branches pitted with insect boreholes.

As I turn over a partially buried tunnel of bark, woodlice scatter, a cluster of garden and brown-lipped snails shrink back into their banded shells, and a common cryptops centipede scuttles for cover.

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Fatcat developers created our housing crisis. Here's how to stop them

Housebuilders, armed with foreign cash and backed by top lobbyists, keep property prices high. But author Bob Colenutt has brilliantly exposed the grip they have on Britain

If you want to see who influences the government, you can do worse than look at Whitehall’s neighbours. In a grand Victorian building opposite the House of Commons in Parliament Square stands the headquarters of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors. With a history dating back to 1792, the RICS is an illustrious professional body, promoting the highest international standards in the valuation and development of land and property. But it has another side.

Its royal charter states that it exists to serve the public interest, yet most of its members’ fees come from landowners and developers, not the public sector. Through its Red Book, the RICS sets the standards by which land and property are valued, but it is one of the most powerful lobbying groups in the development industry, representing the interests of landowners and developers at the highest levels of government. It directly advised on the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) in 2012, which led to 1,300 pages of policy being reduced to 65 in a triumphant bonfire of red tape, and it has numerous committees influencing policy on all aspects of land planning and valuation. It describes part of its mission as “unlocking the inherent value held within the world’s physical assets”, but the question is, for whom is the value being unlocked? And who, consequently, is missing out?

In the eyes of Bob Colenutt, the answer is clear. In his urgent new book, The Property Lobby, he identifies the RICS as one of numerous actors in a complex network of landowners, housebuilders, financial backers, professional bodies and politicians who are engaged in propping up the status quo to ensure that their interests prosper – at the expense of everyone else. The housing crisis is no accident, he argues, but the calculated product of an elite group who have no reason to fix it.

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