WHEN you are house hunting what is more important to you?

Close transport links? Good local schools? Or the broadband speed? You might be surprised to hear that a survey sent to 3,000 people from property portal, Rightmove, revealed that a majority of the participants said that the broadband speed was the most important feature.

Rightmove also revealed that the new broadband speed information it added to listings earlier in the year receives over 400,000 page views monthly.

Local property services company, Romans, is seeing how quickly traffic to its own web and mobile site is increasing, highlighting the importance of the internet for today’s property buyers.

Last year Halifax conducted a survey revealing that 20 per cent of the participants would pay more for the same home if it had good broadband.

Furthermore, 22 per cent of them would pay between four and ten per cent more.

With the average house price in the UK currently standing at £187,188 (Halifax), that means nearly a quarter of people would pay up to £18,719 more.

Antony Gibson, residential sales director said: “The web has made it a lot easier for buyers to investigate areas they’re not accustomed too and broadband connection is starting to play a part in their initial area research, whether they’re an owner occupier or investor landlord.

“However, we’re still finding that they care more about the local schools, transport links and amenities and these are the deal breakers when it comes to making an offer on a property – but this could just be because we’re fortunate enough to cover an area that has great broadband connection, on the whole.”

Between May 2010 and May 2013 premises with access to superfast broadband services almost trebled across the UK.

However, the Government’s rollout of the superfast network, promising speeds of up to 30Mbps across 95 per cent of the UK, has been delayed until 2017.

Antony adds: “Fibre and 4G (fourth generation of mobile phone technology) are the latest tech buzzwords and are, fortunately, becoming more widely available across the UK.

“With mobile internet usage soaring beyond everyone’s expectations I predict buyers will start to seriously take 4G coverage into consideration when house hunting – after all, we all know how annoying it is when you visit a friend’s house and you can’t access the internet on your mobile!”

The Halifax survey also revealed that good broadband connection is more important to younger people, with 40 per cent of 18-24 year olds prepared to pay more, compared to 24 per cent of those aged 65 and over.

Therefore, Romans recommends that landlords looking to grow their property portfolios bear this in mind if they plan on renting to young professionals.