With modern technology having a massive impact on our day to day lives, it’s vital when you are considering a new home to ask questions about services to your new home. Following a Radio 4 You and Yours interview on 5th December 2013, I thought it would be useful to highlight the importance of broadband and access its impact on house prices.

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Broadband

One of the key things you need in today’s age – especially if you have kids – is access to the internet and most areas have access, according to the ONS:-

• In 2012, 21 million households in Great Britain (80 per cent) had Internet access, compared with 19 million (77 per cent) in 2011.
• The number of households with Internet access has increased by 7.1 million (23 percentage points) since 2006, when directly comparable records began.
• In 2012, 93 per cent of households with Internet access used a fixed broadband connection, of which 30 per cent used a cable or fibre optic connection.
• Of the 5.2 million households without Internet access, the most common reason for not having a connection was that they 'did not need it' (54 per cent).
• In 2012, 67 per cent of adults in Great Britain used a computer every day.

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If you don’t have broadband will it affect your property sale?

From the research we did, areas in Kent which didn’t have broadband were finding it was extremely difficult to sell their home. If sellers or agents weren’t upfront about the lack of broadband, the sale could even fall through when potential buyers found out it wasn’t available. So from a property price perspective and ability to sell, a lack of broadband definitely will hold a property’s appeal back.

However, talking to agents in Rutland, of which some areas have great broadband speeds and others don’t, what the agents find is that as long as the property has broadband, then buyers are happy. And it’s important not to be too optimistic about it’s influence on price as it doesn’t appear having good broadband speeds will enhance the price of your property. This is despite a recent report from Halifax suggesting people will pay up to 3% more for fast broadband in a property.

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What can you do if you want to sell your home and you don’t have broadband?

One way to secure broadband is to get everyone in the village together or encourage the local authority to secure funding to have broadband fitted. Rural area Rutland in Leicestershire realised the issue of not being able to access the internet may hamper home workers and businesses as well as the general population. As a result they acted quickly to secure funds from the Regional Growth Fund to introduce super-fast fibre optic broadband to their area. They currently have download speeds of up to 80Mbps and even the most isolated properties will get 2-24Mbps.

For areas where you can’t get, there are two bits of good news. Firstly “Ministers have pledged to bring at least two megabits per second (Mbps) broadband to all homes in Britain by 2015 - and educational programmes sharing the benefits of internet use are ongoing.” Source: BBC

And, part of the reason why this can be achieved is 4GEE claims to cover 60% of the country and means you can access broadband via wi-fi, even if you can’t via cable. Areas in Cumbria for example now have access via this system when previously they had no access at all.

For more help buying or selling a home, visit our First time buyers guide, our trading up or trading down guide and our sellers quick guide.