Super-fast broadband can help the sale of your rural property, but if BT is dragging its heels, try cutting out the middle man.
When Philip and Claire Bull moved into their five-bedroom house, The Gables, in the village of Stoneleigh near Coventry, they found they had the broadband speed of a sloth. They contacted BT, who said they would have to dig a whole new line for them and the cost would be prohibitive. “They didn’t want to upgrade our village because they said it wasn’t economically viable,” said Philip.
Luckily the village was enterprising. It applied for a grant from the Rural Broadband Community Fund, a pot of money set aside for hard-to-reach areas, and in September last year the 300 households of Stoneleigh turned from a broadband not-spot into a broadband hot-spot.
Philip and Claire have had no problem selling their home through Knight Frank, and as they look for a new house they won’t look at anything without speedy broadband.
“The days of logging on just to check emails are over. We want to download masses of data, films, and get constant news updates. It is ridiculous that BT has been contracted to produce a universal service but won’t do it when it is not worth their while. It isn’t as if we live on the side of a mountain. We are four miles from Coventry.”
The thirst for fast broadband is increasingly becoming a stumbling block for house buyers, particularly those moving from London to the country who hope to work from home. Knight Frank’s recent Rural Sentiment Survey found that around 70 per cent of those questioned thought it was a big issue.
“Work which involves moving large amounts of data can be tortuous, and watching television online is frustrating without fast broadband,” says Andrew Shirley, head of rural research at Knight Frank, who carried out the survey. “Given the growing number of people who would like to work from home, and the increasing volume of entertainment that is delivered online, good broadband will become ever more important to property buyers.”
So important is it that the website Rightmove has added broadband speeds and availability to its lists of houses for sale, and the information is attracting 400,000 page views per month. Around 3,000 of its users have reported that speedy broadband is now more important than transport links or schools. One estate agent moaned recently that a buyer pulled out of bidding on a £6m house in the Cotswolds because the internet access was so poor.
In north Somerset, where recent floods emphasised the need for digital communications in times of crisis, residents have set up a private community company called Wansdyke Telecom CIC (Community Interest Company), which recently dug the first trench to supply fast broadband to Newton Farm Shop in Newton St Loe. “Government money available is not being given to small alternative network providers,” says director Matt McCabe. “We want to raise money from the local community to provide the service. You can raise private sector or hedge fund investment; in Durham they have set up a cooperative. Our goal is to fibre-up every property in north-east Somerset in the next few years. We have a small army of champions for the cause.”
In the past decade, Somerset has attracted wealthy buyers. “The Chew Valley is hoping it could be a new Silicon Valley, as it is a fantastic place to live and work once it gets good connectivity,” says Matt, who runs a smallholding on the edge of Englishcombe, just outside Bath. “We don’t want to get left in the digital slow-lane where broadband speeds are so low that kids can’t play on their Xboxes, parents can’t Skype and videoconferencing is awful.”
The problem is that BT has a monopoly (Virgin Media offers super fast speeds, but in limited areas) on delivering faster broadband and has directed resources to urban rather than rural areas, leaving parts of the countryside with chronically slow speeds. BT is also intent on providing fibre-to-the-cabinet, which serves the street or area, but then relies on old-fashioned copper connections to reach individual homes. Small-scale alternative providers believe fibre-to-the-property provides a much better service.
Lincolnshire (apart from the North East) has the slowest broadband in the country – so slow it could take 25 hours to download a two-hour film – and estate agents have noticed that it puts a brake on house sales. “Some buyers have the broadband tested and subsequently pull out because it isn’t fast enough,” says Rupert Fisher of Savills in Lincoln.
One Lincolnshire village, Ashby de la Launde, invited an outside company to lay a fibre optic ring main around the streets after BT had said it was not economically viable to do so. The village set up a company, Fibrestream, to manage the project, which cost £100,000. This will be recouped by residents contributing £125 each to connect, plus a small monthly payment. “The 100 Mbps network speed in Ashby de la Launde makes it a more appealing place to live, especially as more people are choosing to work from home,” says Rupert. “It allows them to live a little bit farther away from a train station, and provides a better quality of life.”
Cornwall has not fared so badly. “There is a programme in place to bring superfast broadband to the county,” said Jonathan Cunliffe of Savills in Truro. “We get asked a lot about broadband by buyers who are between work and retirement. In fact broadband speed, combined with the six daily flights between London and Cornwall, is making people think they can move their whole life and family here, rather than just thinking about it as a holiday destination.”
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