ISPreview Study Claims a Third of UK House Buyers Would Pay Extra for Superfast Broadband

London, United Kingdom, August 01, 2018 --(PR.com)-- Broadband connections are today considered to be an essential service and a new online survey of 2,046 UK internet users, which was conducted by telecoms information site ISPreview.co.uk, has reinforced this by finding that the majority would reject an otherwise perfect house if it couldn't deliver the connection speed they desired. Meanwhile others would simply negotiate a lower price and only 11% didn't care.

Question - What would you do if the house, which might otherwise be perfect, offered lower speeds than your preferred minimum?

Reject it - 55%
Negotiate lower price - 34%
I'm not fussed - 11%

The study also found that as the quality of national broadband ISP speeds has improved, so too have our expectations for the desired performance of a new property.

Back in 2015 a similar survey conducted by the same site found that 50Mbps+ was the "minimum" broadband speed that a new home buyer could tolerate (67%), while today many would expect 100Mbps+ and around a third of respondents said they'd even pay extra for a house to get it.

Question - When buying a new house, what is the minimum broadband speed you could tolerate?

50Mbps - 39.5%
100Mbps+ - 34%
25Mbps - 18%
10Mbps - 7%
Not sure - 1%

Question - How much more would you pay for an ideal house with 100Mbps+ broadband?

I wouldn't pay extra - 49%
I'm not sure - 14%
1% More - 11%
0.5% More - 9%
2-3% More - 9%
More than 3% - 8%

Note: Haliax's May 2018 House Price Index stated that the average UK house price is now a little over £224K (i.e. 0.5% of £224K = £1,120 and 1% = £2,240 and 3% = £6,720).

Mark Jackson, ISPreview.co.uk's Editor-in-Chief, said: "Lately the government has made a lot of noise about how their intervention has helped to extend the reach of 'superfast broadband' (24Mbps+) to 95% of UK premises and they hope to cover 98% by 2020. But it's clear that expectations for house buyers are rising faster than such ambitions.

"Having said that we note that ultrafast (100Mbps+) connections are already available to roughly half of premises (mostly via Virgin Media and some FTTP ISPs). Meanwhile the government's new drive to get us all covered by ultrafast FTTP in time for 2033 is commendable, but that's still a long way off.

"For most people the purchase of a new home is the single biggest investment that they will ever make and getting a good broadband speed clearly forms part of that decision making process. Nevertheless most of the currently available evidence for the impact of broadband speed on house prices is anecdotal. Ultimately the decision about how much you pay for a house will always come down to personal choice, which is different for everybody."