Estate Agents Find Full Fibre May Help to Drive UK House Sales

A new survey of 294 UK estate agents, which was conducted by telecoms equipment manufacturer Omdia on behalf of Huawei, has found that the desire for “high-quality broadband” continues to be a significant factor for home buyers and access to gigabit-capable “full fibre” (FTTP) ISP connections seems to be particularly important.

Since the start of the COVID-19 crisis, some 69% of agents claim to have witnessed an increase in queries about the quality of the broadband connection at a property and 74% of these queries have been concerned with the availability of full fibre connectivity.

Some 34% of agents stated their customers were typically looking for houses with speeds of 300Mbps+ (rising to 37% for new build properties) and this was particularly strong in the Northwest of England (43%) and London (42%). But some 24% of agents stated that typically clients were looking for speeds of 1Gbps (gigabit).

Furthermore, people are willing to pay more to get such speeds. For example, if we take an identical house, albeit one with no broadband vs a house with a connection of 300Mbps, then 37% of agents said the latter would be worth over £5,000 more and 9% stated over £10,000 more  – The highest regions were the North West, Yorkshire and Northern Ireland, where over 45% of respondents stated it would be worth £5,000 or more extra.

However, we don’t think it’s particularly realistic to be comparing against a house with “no broadband connection” in this market, since around 97% of UK premises are estimated to be within reach of at least a 30Mbps+ connection and 65-70% will imminently be covered by at least one gigabit-capable network.

Summary of Other Findings

➤ Over the past 18 months, agents have seen a 71% increase in demand for property (existing houses and new build homes). This is particular high in the Northwest (91% stated an increase), Northeast (79%), Southwest (85%), and Scotland (90%).

➤ 30% of agents ranked “high-quality broadband” as the top of these features (from high-quality broadband, home office space, location to amenities, outside space, and off-road parking) that buyers were least willing to compromise on.

➤ After the overall size of the property (23%) and number of bedrooms (18%), having a high-quality broadband connection (20%) is the 2nd most important feature buyers look for overall. But 20% of agents ranked the availability of high-quality broadband as THE most important feature.

➤ 60% of respondents stated that government investment in high-speed broadband networks to every home would benefit buyers in their area more than investments in electric-car charging points or ecoenergy solutions such as solar panels. This increases to 70% in the Northwest and the Southwest.

➤ Virtually all (93%) agents selling new build properties state that broadband connectivity is essential.

Finally, 70% of agents believe delivering a gigabit broadband service to every home would boost or significantly boost demand for homes in their area. But this does rather overlook the fact that if everybody could get a gigabit connection, then it no longer becomes special (i.e. it becomes an expected necessity, like the availability of drinking water). As such, demand may not be relevant in a market that has achieved universal coverage, but by then we’ll probably be demanding multi-gigabit or terabit speeds instead.

As it stands, most of the currently available evidence for the impact of broadband speed on house prices remains fairly anecdotal and this survey doesn’t change that. We know it’s a key element for the majority of people, but what a buyer will tolerate in terms of connection performance (for some people this is about more than just speed, but also latency etc.) vs house price vs other factors does vary.

When yours truly was choosing his own house some years ago, it was a tricky balancing act between location, school catchments, price, quality of the house itself and of course broadband performance. As the editor of ISPreview.co.uk, broadband was certainly top of that list, but it still had to be balanced against those other factors and our alternative options for local properties.

Ultimately, the decision about how much you pay for a house will always come down to a matter of personal choice, which is of course different for everybody and very hard to quantify.