Real estate for all – including the less privileged

COMMENT Before getting up to date in my series of articles mapping my career in London and international investment, it would be improper and inaccurate not to take account of and comment upon the enormous changes that have occurred particularly in the past five years of my career. These have revolved around three phenomena which are creating change in the way we live and work. Diversity: back to the roots I am having a small time out as the market still struggles to find a level. As I sit here in Sri Lanka watching elephants, I would like to address the elephant in the room. As a founder of Reading Real Estate Foundation’s Pathways To Property, and having chaired the first diversity conference in partnership with EG while I was chief executive of BNP Paribas Real Estate, I have always been a supporter, promoting and pushing access to real estate for all – including the less privileged. I have always been, and will be, a firm believer that it should be “the best person for the job”. Different parts of the world and different professions are at different stages of this. If the person needs to provide balance of sex/nationality/orientation, so be it, as long as it’s right for the business. I do think that we have to be careful that in some instances we do not get overrun with “diversity at any cost” and veer too far the other way. I will leave it to the plethora of representative bodies, champions and journalists to continue to debate, as I think and hope they are better qualified to do so than I. We need to get back to the roots and make a fundamental, long-term and structural positive difference for the resilience and innovation of our sector so that it champions talent wherever it comes from and in any form. It’s all about results and quality after all (not just financial) – not taking shortcuts and patting ourselves on the back for skewing the figures. ESG: banks hold the key We are undoubtedly mistreating our planet. But there’s doing something about it and there’s “getting on the bandwagon” and “greenwashing”. I cannot abide the latter. HSBC has been accused of exaggerating green policies for positive PR and, as long as 10 years ago, I did smile when I read about Al Gore’s domestic energy bills: to him this must have been an extremely inconvenient truth. We need to act, and faster, in the built environment and make real change. I’d love someone to explain to me, simply, what an ESG Excellent building is, and how carbon credits reduce the world’s carbon. As for the redevelopment versus refurbishment debate, each building is different. What we need is for the banks to hold the key to ESG with real incentivisation to fund sustainable development, developers to build long-lasting buildings and the government to put in place achievable targets that are specific to the use of a building and certified via a system that means something. Digitalisation: not either/or During my career we have progressed from sharing a Wang computer with a ticker tape printer between 40 of us and a personal Casio cash roll calculator to AI. Real estate for me is still a people business. We need to make sure that we use the machines and they do not use us. Data/analysis/comparison/calculation/risk are at the heart of what we do – we need to develop and use the machines to help us to get as near to the crystal ball as possible (please could I be first?). Digitalisation, technology and AI are and will be a way of life, but it cannot and should not be an either/or situation. The tech can gather the data, but we must interpret it using our human insight of people and property. We must be aware, embrace and beware. Digital is now how we operate our lives and our businesses. John Slade is a director at SladesCo