Slow broadband devalues houses?

According to reports, slow broadband devalue your home by as much as 20%. Property experts have said that the lack of superfast connectivity in an area can be a deal breaker when it comes to house sales.

The majority of us use the internet to perform a wide range of tasks including shopping, socialising, streaming entertainment and working which has made superfast broadband crucial for most people.

A survey of 3,000 homebuyers found that broadband information was more important than information regarding transport links and nearby schools. Broadband speed is now actually regarded as the “fourth most important utility” after gas, water and electricity.

And it’s not just about broadband, a decent mobile coverage is vital too for homebuyers too.

The property portal Rightmove, has now added a broadband checker to every listing. This enables you to see what kind of connection you can expect if you chose to buy the property.

This new broadband speed information has generated over 400,000 page views a month, which is more than 1/3 of Rightmoves traffic, proving just how important homebuyers consider it.

Houses in rural and more remote areas generally have slow broadband speeds of 2 megabits per second or less which can make the simplest tasks such as sending an email or searching a website painfully slow.

Improving web speed to the rural and remote areas despite the Government’s efforts to rollout superfast broadband to 95% of the UK doesn't look overly promising. The government had promised speeds of up to 30Mbps but it has now been delayed until 2017 and organisations such as the Royal Socienty of Edinburgh Digital Scotland working group reckon that the prospect of this is “dismal”, they consider the target of 30Mbps for everyone by 2020 is hilariously optimistic.  

The latest figures actually show that broadband speeds of 30Mbps are actually unavailable to over a quarter of the country.