>Gigabit Internet and the places that have it could look very appealing once the technology that puts it to work starts to gain traction.
I certainly agree that gigabit internet will be more valuable in the future than it is now.
But, will that make property way more valuable? maybe. thing of it is, compared to silicon valley property values, getting fiber in to multi-family dwellings isn't all that expensive.
You are gonna need like 50 neighbors to make the ongoing cost reasonable, so that's harder with single-family homes, but not impossible. Install costs are high, but not that high; generally $5-$15K one-time to trench from the street into a property and splice in, so if you can talk all your neighbors into blowing 10K+ each on the install, plus your $50 each ongoing, well, you could totally do it. The whole project is way more appealing than, say, moving your ass to Sacramento or Kansas or somewhere else you probably don't want to live.
Imagine moving to a place without cable, DSL, or even a wireless provider. Now imagine 5-6 very popular services depend on gigabit speeds in the same way YouTube or Steam depends on cable, DSL, and wireless. How many people would buy a house without a gigabit link in that environment?
My point is that if something changes the SV market situation, like an exodus of investors to Texas or another Google Fiber location, housing prices are going to fall fast as the money leaves.
tl;dr: the fiber will come to the consumer, not the other way around.
You misunderstand. I'm not saying that gigE isn't great. Certainly within the next decade, (and hopefully sooner) nearly all of us are going to demand gigE to the home.
My point is just that the economics of the situation are such that the presence of gigE lines isn't going to move the price of real-estate all that much. In expensive areas, the cost of real-estate utterly dominates the cost of getting gigabit network connections, if all your neighbors want the same speed.
The main reason gigabit to the home is unaffordable right now is due to low density of demand, and as you point out, that is going to change.
I certainly agree that gigabit internet will be more valuable in the future than it is now.
But, will that make property way more valuable? maybe. thing of it is, compared to silicon valley property values, getting fiber in to multi-family dwellings isn't all that expensive.
You are gonna need like 50 neighbors to make the ongoing cost reasonable, so that's harder with single-family homes, but not impossible. Install costs are high, but not that high; generally $5-$15K one-time to trench from the street into a property and splice in, so if you can talk all your neighbors into blowing 10K+ each on the install, plus your $50 each ongoing, well, you could totally do it. The whole project is way more appealing than, say, moving your ass to Sacramento or Kansas or somewhere else you probably don't want to live.