Majority of people willing to pay more for home with good broadband

The importance of broadband in the home buying decision has been a major factor for the technology freaks in the UK but a survey by the Halifax reveals how important it is to the general public.

"A strong broadband connection is an increasingly important factor when choosing where to live. We are living in the digital age and as such more people are choosing to work from home, but as well as this it's a part of our everyday lives with web browsing and streaming television commonplace.



As a result we find people are increasingly prepared to pay a premium for homes with a good broadband signal, and this is likely to remain a factor when choosing where to live." Martin Ellis, economist at Halifax

The definition of a good broadband connection is fairly minimal at 2 Mbps in the survey, but with 30% of people saying good broadband will affect their decision to buy a home in a particular area. The more biggest surprise is the amount of money people we willing to spend if a home has a good broadband connection, a fifth of people would be willing to pay an extra 4% to 10% on the price of a property which is a significant sum of money when average UK house price is £162,932. The number willing to pay a 3% premium is even higher, with 85% of those in the North East will to pay the extra, dropping to 40% in the East Midlands and averaging out at two thirds.

It is this price premium that Openreach may be gambling on with its roll-out of fibre on demand this spring, in that as people move home they may use this as an opportunity to pay the connection fee for a full fibre connection and after a few years there will be a sufficiently large numbers of homes in the UK passed by the Openreach GEA-FTTP network that the price premium for fibre on demand will vanish.

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