In a recent survey carried out on house buyers, it was revealed that 20% would not buy a property if it had slow internet speeds.
Likewise, a house having super-fast internet is often a deal-breaker when it comes to house hunting with many prospective buyers viewing the Wi-Fi connection more important than the number of bedrooms.
Whilst the size of a property is still the most important thing to most house buyers, for many house hunters that is the only thing that the quality and speed of the internet comes second best to. And, according to estate agents in Scotland and the Southwest, some prospective house buyers value the availability of high-quality broadband above everything else. Even house size.
Nearly a third of estate agents surveyed said their clients were least likely to compromise on high-quality broadband. This feature was deemed more important than local amenities or above space!
According to Ofcom, by the end of 2021 full-fibre broadband was available to 8.2 million homes (28%). This was 3 million more premises (10 percentage points) than a year ago, and represents the highest year-on-year increase since full fibre started being rolled out in the UK.
Does availability of Wi-Fi affect house prices?
The rollout of this internet upgrade seems to be affecting the price of property. When comparing exactly the same house but one with a broadband connection of 300 Mbps and one without, the one without broadband would be worth around £5K less.
Unsurprisingly, COVID also seems to have had an effect on this. Suddenly the UK population was plunged into home-working, with so many more households relying on a strong, reliable Wi-Fi connection for work and home-learning.
Nearly three quarters of agents surveyed said they saw an increase in questions specifically regarding the quality and speed of the broadband connection when considering a property since the pandemic.
SpeedScore from Geekabit Wi-Fi Experts
With a decade of providing connectivity solutions to UK markets, Geekabit saw how house buyers, tenants and hospitality customers are getting more tech savvy and starting to ask questions about internet speeds and reliability.
Thus, back in October last year, we launched our innovative Internet Connectivity Measurement Platform – Geekabit SpeedScore.
This gives you a variety of tools to help provide an independent certification of your internet speeds and connectivity. Ideal if you’re an estate agent trying to prove the speed and connectivity of a property’s internet!
You can read more about SpeedScore here.
