Are you selling or purchasing a home in Los Altos Hills in the near future? Here are some general information concerning Internet availability and home value in LAH.
NOTE: LAHCF is not a licensed or trained Real Estate agent, but we have helped several home owners review their Internet options when selling or purchasing a home in LAH. This page outlines some issues and best practices.
Overview
To be blunt, Internet Service options for any particular property in Los Altos Hills can go from stellar to no service at all. Homes on the same street might have different options available. Each home is different
The basic Internet service options are listed below (as of 2024) ranked by least to most highly regarded service :
- Satellite (Viasat): This service typically comes with high-latency values (Viasat = 600 ms) and somewhat slow speeds (90 mb/sec down and 8 mb/sec up); the plans are relatively expensive (~$100/mo), and the service is not consistent especially in poor weather situations.
- Cellular hot spots: This service is typically expensive, usually data-capped, and have speed and reliability issues.
- Point-to-point microwave: Relatively expensive, usually with data caps, reasonable speeds, but requires line of site to local tower of provider.
- AT&T DSL: This service runs on telephone copper pairs; very slow (1-4 mb/sec) download speed and even slower (under 1 mb/sec) upload speeds; AT&T has been phasing this service out as fast as they can. There are likely only a few homes who can still get this service.
- AT&T U-Verse: Wired with telephone copper pairs this service provides up to 50 mb/sec download and up to 5 mb/sec upload, but for many homes it is 24/3 mb/sec. The service is usually reliable but often over-subscribed so that the actual speed is often less than advertised; data is usually not capped. The plans are somewhat affordable ($60-70/mo) especially when bundled with other services, however, if you look at price per mb/sec, the service does not provide great value.
- Sonic (AT&T) & other DSL/U-Verse providers: Similar to AT&T U-Verse, but often provides slightly higher speeds; sometimes more reliable. It is also typically affordable. Not available in many neighborhoods.
- Comcast Xfinity (or other cable Internet service): Wired TV Cable services can provide fast (approaching 1 gb/sec) download speeds, but significantly slower (35 mb/sec.) upload speeds. The price of the service varies greatly and often doubles after the initial contract. Installation costs can run from as little as $150 to over $15K, depending on the neighborhood. Many neighborhoods have significant performance, latency, and reliability issues. New Comcast installations are not available in many neighborhoods, especially on private roads.
- AT&T Fiber: The availability of this service is expanding east of 280 rather quickly. The teaser contracts are often low (approx. $70/mo); however, right now AT&T appears to be connecting only people who have easy connectivity from the pole to the home. We have noted that people on one side of a street can get service, but people on the other side cannot. Speeds are high at 1 gb/sec up and down. Asking AT&T to build out your neighborhood has been quoted at around $28K per home based on one quote we heard about. The service appears to be reliable at this point; however, it is arial and is vulnerable to falling trees and severe storms.
- LAH Community Fiber: Available in a limited number of neighborhoods along our 6 miles of backbone; however LAHCF is wants to expand and is willing to work with groups of residents that are large enough to make the construction affordable. Our installations usually involve relatively large upfront installation cost ($7-20k) to get connected to the LAHCF fiber backbone. LAHCF provides both 1 gb/sec and 10 gb/sec (up and down) service on fiber to the house. Monthly pricing is reasonable ($145/mo) and decreasing as subscribers increase. LAHCF offers the fastest residential broadband speeds in America for $199/mo.
Purchasing a home in LAH?
LAHCF communicates with many folks who have either just purchased a home in LAH or looking to buy one. We always recommend you fully research your Internet service options before you place a bid on a home.
First, never assume that a home in LAH is going to have “good or reasonable” internet service. You might think that whoever lived there before must have installed and configured a reliable, high-speed internet service that you can take over their service. It is often not so.
Secondly, never assume that you can simply call up AT&T or Comcast and ask them to come out and install service for you if that service is not already present at an address. If the seller’s agent tells you can simply get a low cost new installation of U-Verse or Comcast, they are not telling you the truth. To make things even more difficult, if you contact Comcast and ask if they would be able to serve a particular address, they may initially say yes and suggest a reasonable installation cost. Upon further communications with Comcast, they may come back with either the install cost is $10K-$20K or they simply may say it is not possible at all. (This has happened to several of our neighbors!) AT&T typically doesn’t have these super expensive installs for their U-Verse connections as they use the existing twisted telephone copper pairs to deliver the last mile of service. But certain sections of town can’t get any AT&T Internet Services—neither DSL, U-Verse, or fiber.
The value of “quality” Internet at your home is often a deal breaker and should be one of the first questions you ask when buying a home. Always confirm with your own research that the property is already served by a land-based provider (AT&T or Comcast), if the homeowner or agent says it is available. You may want to write into any contract the availability of the service provider that they have indicated exists and can be re-established.
One way to confirm service is to have the existing home owner/agent show an Internet Service provider bill for that address. You can also have a LAHCF respresentative come out and look at the various connectors/wires inside and outside of the home.
If you want to review LAHCF Fiber build options for a particular address, please contact us and we review existing LAHCF build projects that could include the address of interest.
Questions that a buyer should ask:
- What Internet service provider vendor does the home most currently have connected for service? Can I see a recent bill?
- What are the up and down speeds in mb/sec?
- What is the latency is in milliseconds?
- Are there any issues with this service for example reliability?
- Did you recently switch provider? If so from which provider and why?
- How well wired is the home to handle distribution of broadband service?
- What cell service do you have at the property? Does it work well on the property?
- Do you have any backup internet service provider options?
Selling a home in LAH?
If are considering selling your home, what should you do concerning your Internet Service?
First, you should fully disclose what Internet Service provider you had previous configured and why. Buyers should demand this and you should be ready to answer this truthfully.
You could list all Internet Service options you had before and the reasons why you choose to change providers. It might be worthy of some buyers to know if the service provided had issues worth mentioning of latency, reliability, or service. Many homes in LAH have older cable system lines that were directly buried in the ground. Now, 30-40 years later, the buried cable quality is poor and your capable speeds are slow compared to others with the same provider in other parts of town.
Maybe your service is a very expensive point-to-point microwave solution that cost you $900/mo. (This is a real number). You should disclose that you chose this options and its monthly price for yourself based on your options.
You might want to consider upgrading the internet service to your home before selling. For some home purchasers, getting a 10-gb/sec. connection (like LAHCF’s fiber connection) to your home could raise the value of your home by $100K** or more. If you have get an LAHCF connection to your home for $5K to $10K, you will easily pay for that upgrade when you sell your home.
**Real Estate surveys have been done nationwide that show a home can sell for more as much as 7% more if there is an internet fiber solution over another home that has standard or minimal internet service. If the average home price in Los Altos Hills is $3 million, 7% is $210K.
Answers the seller should be prepare to share the following information:
- Be prepared to show a recent statement for your current internet service.
- Perform a speedtest.net app speed test and record that value into a screenshot.
- If your internet service is slow, explain the situation so there are no surprises for the buyer.
- In your house description, be proactive by showing that your internet service is a valuable asset of your property and you want to highlight it as feature that adds value to the property and does not detract from the value.
- Show any research you have done concerning connect to fiber service, such as how LAHCF could connect your home.
- Provide a list of cell provider services that work well near your home.
- Provide a list of internet service providers that are available for your home, possibly even a list of the providers that your closest neighbors use.
Los Altos Hills Community Fiber 