What your estate agent doesn’t tell you

Slow broadband speeds trumps noisy neighbours as most annoying unexpected home-mover bugbear

Slow broadband speed at peak-times has been cited as the number one unexpected home-mover bugbear, according to a survey of 3,000 Brits. Indeed, many wouldn’t have moved at all had they known the broadband would be inadequate.

Respondents were asked what information they would most like to know about a property, which isn’t readily available from an agent or the website. Over a third of Brits (34%) said they wanted to know what broadband speeds they would receive at peak times, another key concern expressed by 28% was the responsiveness of the landlord. The reliability of the mobile phone signal was important to 18% but not living next to noisy neighbours surprisingly came in at the bottom of the list with only 6% of Brits saying that it would be their top concern.

According to the survey, 12% of Brits are planning to move home in 2017 - 37% of these are looking to buy and 63% are looking to rent. Hyperoptic, www.hyperoptic.com, the UK’s leading full fibre provider, commissioned the research to get insight into what unexpected issues are most annoying for UK home-movers.

For both renters and buyers, poor peak-time broadband speeds is the biggest bugbear that would have put many of them off moving into their new property altogether, if they had known about it in advance. Nearly half of renters (48%) would have avoided a property entirely if they had known that it had poor broadband speeds at peak-time. For over a third (36%) flaky mobile signal would have also been a deal breaker, followed by an unresponsive landlord (33%), noisy neighbours (32%) and loud road noise (26%).

For buyers the following would have put them off if they had known about it in advance: broadband speeds (39%), mobile phone signal issues (22%), noisy neighbours (32%) and road noise (19%).

Steve Holford, Chief Customer Officer, Hyperoptic: “We are hitting one of the busiest times of the year for moving home, but ironically for many the speed of the market won’t be matched by the speed at which they can connect to the Internet when they get into a new property. The average property broadband speed that is given from a property website is basically misleading since it does not factor in how much a Fibre-to-the-Cabinet broadband service can reduce at peak times. It is time that the property sector woke up to the fact that broadband is not just a standard property amenity – it has the power to turn off a prospective renter and buyer altogether. Brits want and deserve to know how their broadband will perform at the time they need it most.”

David Atherton, OBE, comments: “Once bitten twice shy – I know what it’s like to live with broadband speeds that are marketed at one speed, but disappear to nothing at peak times and are utterly unusable. With a possible house move in mind I have spent an inordinate amount of time researching what speeds I would actually get in practice, a task made more difficult by absent/inaccurate broadband speed statistics on most housing websites that don’t give you an insight into how much they can fluctuate.”

For those Brits that are not planning on moving in 2017, the main reason is that they are happy where they are (46%), followed money concerns and that they can’t afford a move (38%) and for many (16%) it’s the simple fact that they can’t face the hassle of moving (16%).

For the 4.4% of Brits that are planning to buy a property in 2017, the key drivers are: a better location (49%), a better price (27%) and more space (24%).

Find out more about what is broadband speed.