A future of self-driving cars challenge the iron laws of real estate: location no longer matters

The link between property and transport has been perhaps the most durable in human history.

Since the ancients, few things have delivered higher land values with more certainty than advances in transport, from roads to canals, railways to highways.

It’s still “a no-brainer” in the 21st century, says Bridget Buxton. She bought a fixer-upper with her husband in a scruffy part of East London in 2016 because it’s a short walk to the high-speed cross-town rail line due to open this year. Prices are up 90 per cent in the past five years for homes like hers, far outpacing the whole city.

But now, the dawn of the driverless car promising a utopia of stress-free commutes, urban playgrounds and the end of parking hassles threatens to complicate the calculus for anyone buying property.

“Real estate might be the industry that is most transformed by autonomous vehicles,” said David Silver, who teaches self-driving engineering at Udacity, an online university that has enrolled more than 10,000 students who want in on the transport of the future. “It could change real estate from a business that is all about location, location, location.”

It may take a while: The earliest examples of driverless services - buses, taxis and delivery vans - have already arrived, but widespread consumer adoption might not be here for a decade. And almost half a century passed from Henry Ford’s 1908 Model T, the first car for the masses, before suburbs designed for drivers took hold. And that’s why investors like Ric Clark, chairman of Brookfield Property Partners LP, the world’s largest real estate investment company, admit they’re involved in little more than guesswork.