Light Up My Street & Boost My House Price

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It isn't that long since I posted about broadband and estate agents. Now ISPreview have conducted a survey on the impact that lack of broadband has on house prices, particularly relevant at a time when house prices are on the rise......

The ISPReview monthly survey is, of course, a somewhat self-chosen audience to be asking these particular questions to. But it does clearly show that broadband now affects, as shown in my post, the purchase decision of MANY, MANY people.

If you re-phrased the ISPreview questions so that Joe Public didn't get flustered when asked about broadband speeds (eg "would you buy a house with a broadband connection where iPlayer didn't play properly?" might be more user-friendly!) and ran a survey on, say, the BBC website, you would probably find the figures even more illustrative of the reality of the situation in the UK.

Let's just consider for a moment...

If any of us had known for sure when we bought our homes that we would not get a decent broadband connection by, say, 2009/2010 (as many haven't), AND known then how important that connection would be to our daily lives, leisure, families, kids' education etc etc in 2009/10, would we have moved to the house we did? More interestingly, how many would have set to and done something about it earlier eg built a community network, aggregated demand and shared a fat pipe, if we had realised the telcos, govt etc were not exactly telling us the truth about when true broadband would arrive?

Sadly, some of us did know when we bought our homes because we had already been stuck in the broadband campaigning lark for far too long at that point, and we do know that decent broadband ain't going to get here in a hurry unless we do something about it, but there are thousands and thousands of people in the UK who are NOT aware of the reality of the situation and keep believing the hype.

Alston Cybermoor did some work on broadband and its effect on house prices and as I recall the average house price in the area had risen to over £15,000 more than expected because of the presence of the community network.

If I was planning to sell my house, I think I would investigate which of my neighbours might also be planning the same over the next few years and invest with them in setting to and increasing the value of all the houses in the neighbourhood. After all, putting in a pukka broadband connection is really not that different from building a conservatory or following the advice of those weird daytime house improvement programmes which have ruined our mornings for so long.

Aha, I can see a commissioning editor reading this and seeing the massive potential for a programme showing just how much you can add to your house value by putting in true next generation access.......C'mon Channel 4, this should be right up your street. You could call it "Light Up My Street"....

You read it here first....!