Average UK House Buyers Would Spend £6500 Extra for Fast Broadband Speeds

A new survey of 2,700 British home buyers has claimed that an average purchaser would be willing to pay an additional £6,500 for a property if it meant they would be guaranteed to have excellent broadband speed, although the survey fails to clarify what “excellent” actually means.

Apparently all of the respondents to the Broadbanddeals.co.uk poll agreed that they would be discouraged from purchasing a house if the only available broadband connectivity was poor or slow, with 62% admitting that they were already used to a fast connection in their current home and didn’t wish to downgrade. Meanwhile 27% said they needed fast broadband because they worked from home.

Top aspects that most deter home buyers
1. Poor / slow broadband connections – 88%
2. Above average levels of crime – 81%
3. A lack of local transport links / motorway access – 73%
4. A lack of nightlife / shops – 64%
5. A lack of local nurseries / schools – 58%

The fact that access to faster broadband connectivity is so important to such a large proportion of people is no surprise and plenty of other surveys have echoed similar results, although the decision about how much you pay for a house and what matters most in that equation will always come down to personal choice, which is different for everybody.

Sadly the survey does not appear to have defined what should constitute “excellent broadband“, which is important because everybody is likely to have a different opinion. On top of that the rising coverage of “superfast broadband” (24Mbps+) networks, which are currently estimated to reach around 93% of UK premises, may make this debate less relevant until “ultrafast” (100Mbps+) becomes necessary as a basic requirement.

A similar online survey conducted by ISPreview.co.uk in 2015 found that for 67% of respondents the minimum broadband speed that a new home buyer could tolerate was 50Mbps+, with 17.8% choosing 25Mbps+ and 12.2% picking 10Mbps+. The same survey also noted that 66.4% would NOT pay extra for a house with “superfast broadband“.