I do feel a little bit like I’m living in the future,” says Jane Gibson, coyly. “But you get used to things. Automation has become part of everyday life.”

Reader, if you harbour even the slightest Luddite tendency – if you worry about your children playing video games, dislike the idea of Kindles, or fret that social networking will make traditional friendships obsolete – look away now. When it comes to technology, the Gibson family pulls no punches.

In fact, they have built their lives around it. Almost every room in their 150-year-old, four-bedroom, stone farm house in Yorkshire has at least one television (the house has eight in total), all of which are centralised and can play any film or television show on demand. They also host a bewildering variety of computer games.

The heart of the house – or as Jane puts it, “the room we spend most of our lives in” – is a fully automated home cinema, with a seven-feet screen on which they can watch films, television and browse the internet. And when they’ve finished doing that, the two boys, Thomas, 14, and Ryan, 12, take over the big screen for some PlayStation fun (their favourite game at the moment is Assassin’s Creed).

“But they can’t just watch and play whatever they like,” says Jane. “Even if I’m out of the house, I can see exactly what they’re watching on my iPad. If I don’t approve, I can press the ‘lockout’ button and the screen will automatically go dead until the following morning.” Continue reading on Telegraph website

In recent months, there has been a rash of reports of luxury properties being rented out for the Olympics for eye-watering sums. Leading the pack was a seven-bedroom house in Brick Street, Mayfair, which came complete with a cinema, games room, bar, gym, swimming pool, solarium and sauna. This, at £100,000 per week, was set to make history as the most expensive London let ever. Close on its heels was a penthouse at 116 Knightsbridge, next door to 1 Hyde Park. It boasted a 150-foot frontage with panoramic views of the Serpentine, 9000 square feet of lateral living space, and 2000 square feet of terrace and roof gardens. The price? £75,000 per week. Former Arsenal and England footballer Sol Campbell is offering his Chelsea pad – which has a separate mews house for the housekeeper, connected to the main house by a tunnel – at the same rate (he and his wife will be roughing it in another of their properties, a 2,400 sq ft apartment down the road).

All of these prices have been massively inflated for the games. “Normally, a short-term let would be 30 to 50 per cent higher than the long-term price,” says Lisa Simon, Head of Lettings at Carter Jonas. “In the Olympic period, however, we are seeing increases of up to 300 per cent.” The penthouse, for instance, normally goes for a weekly rate of £25,000, and the Mayfair house for £40,000. Clearly, these high-end landlords had their eye on a different sort of Olympic gold.

But things are not looking good for the property moguls. With the games only months away, Carter Jonas has received not a single enquiry for the penthouse. Sol Campbell’s house remains on the market, too. And although Knight Frank says that the mansion in Brick Street, Mayfair, is “no longer available,” the lack of fanfare from the agents makes it doubtful whether it achieved the asking price. Continue reading on the Telegraph website

It all started in Victorian times. “One of my forebears was the stationmaster of King’s Cross Station,” says Anna Gudge. “It was a prestige job in those days. He used to wear a top hat and tails, and roll out the red carpet for the Queen. He became a big part of family folklore.”

Anna never learnt her ancestor’s name, but she certainly inherited his passion for railways. She grew up in the Fifties, in a house beside the old Cavendish station in Suffolk, and her childhood was filled with steam trains. “When I was five or six, I made friends with the stationmaster next door and his wife,” she says. “I would spend hours sitting in the signal box helping him change the points .” His wife would bring them “weak tea and biscuits”, she recalls; then she would “toddle home again”.

After Anna was married in 1968, she and her husband moved into a disused level crossing house just down the line from her childhood home. “It was a tiny two-up-two-down, with a bathroom tacked on to the back,” she recalls. “It was cramped, but also idyllic.” This was a prelude for what was to come. Years later, in October 1994, Anna and her new partner Mark spent £100,000 on an entire 1865 railway station – Long Melford, two stops down from Cavendish – to convert into a family home. Read more on the Telegraph website

Given the stagnancy of the housing market and the paucity of credit, first-time buyers are having a tougher time than ever. Gemma Morris, 23, and her partner Paddy McBride, 27, are looking to develop their first property. “We feel we need guidance,” says Gemma. “Otherwise we wouldn’t be brave enough to take the plunge.”

Thankfully, Gemma has a rather special mother. Sylvia, 69, who has four children (Gemma is the youngest) and six grandchildren, has developed and sold nine properties over the past 30 years – and shows no sign of stopping. She is currently looking for her next renovation project, and has put her three-bedroom home in Lightwater, Surrey, up for sale. Dilapidated when she bought it, it now has an extension on the front and a mews-style house at the back. The property, which Sylvia bought for £345,000, is on the market for £675,000 (astonmead.com; 01344 209000).

“People think I’m mad,” says Sylvia. “My husband Kenny, who died in 2006, would come back from work to find I’d knocked a wall down. You could say I’ve got the renovation bug.” Continue reading on the Telegraph website