Can A Little Wire Improve My Home's Value?

You can't turn on a TV today without someone selling you telecom services. From cell phones to high speed net access, the deals are abundant. In this five-part series, we are looking at novel ways to understand trends that impact our home's value.

In most parts of the country there are two major providers of telecom services for phone and Cable TV. For the last year or so the battles have been fierce to get homeowners to sign up for bundled services. This "triple play" is comprised of telephone service, Cable TV and internet access. The theory is that if you sign up for all three from one provider, you will save money and build allegiance with one carrier. They are hoping for that too!

One trend that is seen in most planned communities and new developments is the deployment of Fiber To The Home (FTTH). This process runs fiber optic cables directly into your home to provide the greatest bandwidth opportunity for your telecom needs.

But where we see a trend is in the value increase of a home that has access to or actually has fiber running right into it. (see charts below)

A study by RVA Market Research (www.rvallc.com) says there are now 2.91 million homes connected via end-to-end fiber, compared to 1.48 million connections as of April 2007.  This represents an annual growth rate of 97 percent, indicating that the number of FTTH connections continues will almost double annually.

The study also shows fiber to the home networks now passing 11.8 million North American homes, up from 8 million a year ago. The overall 'take rate'  the percentage of those offered FTTH service who decide to subscribe  went up for the fourth straight six-month period.

Another study gets to the trend we are covering. High technology-enabled homes sell faster and for more money.The study, conducted for the Fiber To The Home Council (FTTHCOUNCIL.com) and was covered in Consumer Reports February 08 issue. Here are the major findings:

Homes that have Fiber get more attention as today's consumers are more reliant on high speed access for many reasons. Even homes that are passed by fiber would naturally have more appeal.




And overall consumers are happier with the service aspects of having Fiber vs. other technologies.




If you are about to market your home for sale, or purchase one that is either Fiber ready or Fiber enabled, you should stay up on the great resources at http://www.ftthcouncil.com/ a non-profit education organization.