Twenty years ago, the idea of a new home with fingerprint door entry, cameras in each room and switches operated by mobile phone was the stuff of fantasy. Ten years ago it became reality, but only in houses for the super-rich.

Now, for the first time, we can all afford it — but, for the moment at least, only if we live in Crouch End. The north London suburb is where a niche developer called PlayNest is building flats at 74 Crouch Hall Road, starting at £250,000, that feature fingerprint-reading door handles, a security channel on the television allowing you to check different rooms, underfloor and wall-cavity heating, a robot vacuum cleaner and an alarm system that can be set from your mobile phone or palmtop.

Owners can also set the room lights to switch on and off as people walk in and out, programme shower temperatures for different times of the day or year and start the music system automatically as they walk through the front door. There is a water-resistant television set in the bathroom and a device in the garage that preheats the car before you leave for work on chilly winter mornings.

“It’s not fair that we don’t have these sorts of facilities in ordinary homes,” says Adekoyejo Odunaiya, the ebullient developer who runs PlayNest. “If you look at America or Sweden, average-cost houses have high levels of technology that are standard, such as air-conditioning and wiring for wireless internet. In the UK we associate this only with properties costing £1m or more. Why? “We should be looking at photovoltaic tiles to supply light and heat; there should be an electricity generator in each house; and there should be an irrigation system to recycle water. You find them in expensive houses, but not anywhere else. Yet the technology costs almost nothing these days,” says Odunaiya.

Other developers also adopt new technology in average-priced properties, but usually just one or two eye-catching facilities that assist with marketing.

For example, Chase Homes’ Auden Court development in Harborne, Birmingham, where homes start at £190,000, features a music and cinema system based on the iPod. It allows up to 7,500 songs or 75 hours of video to be stored and played in different rooms.

Estate agents say buyers are demanding more facilities like this, but developers are failing them. “You get advanced cabling in decent new developments, so owners can later install centrally controlled sound systems and the like, but not a lot else,” explains Richard Forshaw, new homes director of estate agent Kinleigh Folkard & Hayward.

“A lot of buyers want new homes with broadband and WiFi, and any developer fitting those as standard would simply be doing what a new owner may fit themselves,” Forshaw says. He predicts that developers will eventually improve the spec even of modestly priced homes, while owners of existing properties will retrofit new technology.

This is what businessman George Hadjidimitriou did when he installed a fingerprint security system in his three-bed flat in St John’s Wood, north London, after a spate of burglaries in the area.

“It’s ingenious. You put in either your fingerprint or a personal identification number. The door is incredibly secure, so if you cut your finger and the print isn’t recognised, and you forget your Pin, you have to cut through it.”

His system can be programmed to accept up to 100 individuals’ fingerprints, and it can record when each user enters and exits through the door.

Technology like this is no longer expensive — fingerprint-entry door handles are sold by firms such as Icon Biometrics from £200 — but it has rarely been used in the UK, although it can be found elsewhere in Europe.

Spanish developer EuroCenter has devised an integrated home automation system for second-home owners who are often away from their property. Its villas at El Magraner on the Costa Blanca include miniature surveillance cameras, active 24 hours a day, recording images that are viewable on the owner’s mobile phone, laptop or palmtop. It allows you to monitor who is calling or looking at the property, or to check on guests staying there. A fingerprint reader or swipe card at the property, or a Pin fed into a mobile phone anywhere in the world, can operate the gate and front and garage doors, while humidity and sun sensors turn on the lawn sprinklers and roll out the veranda blinds. If there is a gas or water leak, or if smoke is detected, power is automatically turned off and the appropriate emergency or utility service is contacted. The owner then receives an automated text and voice message on his mobile phone.

The technology was enough to persuade Bernard Turner and Ray Ellames to retire there from Warrington, buying a villa to live in and house their Lladro porcelain figures, believed to be the largest private collection in Europe.

“Remote control of the system by computer or mobile phone gives peace of mind whether we’re at home or away,” says Ellames, who says the different alarm systems installed in the property clinched his decision to buy.

“If we had to switch them all on and off by hand — well, we just wouldn’t bother.”

Flats at 74 Crouch Hall Road are for sale through Kinleigh Folkard & Hayward, 020 7491 2055, www.kfh.co.uk; Auden Court through DTZ Residential, 0121 454 3360, www.dtzresidential.co.uk; EuroCenter’s El Magraner villas are for sale from £520,000 through Ultra Villas, 0845 130 5464, www.ultravillas.co.uk

Icon Biometrics, 0845 838 1738, www.iconbiometrics.co.uk

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