Broadband fiber correlates with increased house prices

Preliminary research indicates that broadband fiber results in about 5% increase in property values for connected houses. This would indicate that an MSA wanting to profit from broadband should want to deploy it as widely as possible, especially in new housing. Hm, what’s the Homebuilders’ Association’s position on this?

NCM 0268 fiber ... result in 5.1% change in real estate value

The authors report that “fiber presence is associated with a positive effect on property values”, in The Impact of High-Speed Broadband Availability on Real Estate Values: Evidence from United States Property Markets by Gabor Molnar, University of Colorado at Boulder; Scott Savage, University of Colorado at Boulder; Douglas Sicker, University of Colorado at Boulder.

NCM 0271 fiber presence is associated with a positive effect on property values

The authors took many variables into account, thus isolating the broadband effect.

NCM 0272 Model Variables

Of course correlation is not causality, and this study was from only three MSAs in nine counties in New York State for 2011; nonetheless the results are quite suggestive.

NCM 0275 Master Dataset: 3 MSAs, 9 counties, in New York State for 2011
Pictures by John S. Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE),
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 28 September 2013.

The study didn’t include wireless broadband access such as 4G LTE. The presenting author said he would look into data to do that in the future.

-jsq