Forget finding out if you can build an extension or whether the garden fence belongs to you or the neighbours. What property buyers really want to know when they research a new home is how many TV channels they can watch and the speed at which they'll be able to connect to the internet.

A new survey* from leading property portal fish4homes shows that more people (14 per cent) make a priority of researching television and broadband connections than property boundaries (12 per cent) or the history of planning applications (4 per cent).

The details of in-home entertainment are almost as important to prospective purchasers as crime rates (15 per cent) and council tax bands (17 per cent), with car parking arrangements the only thing to clearly cause them more concern (19 per cent).

The survey also shows how little time people spend researching their new neighbourhood. Exactly 50 per cent spend less than one hour walking around their new area, and four per cent admit to not even walking around the block. Just one in seven spends more than four hours finding out about the place they are about to move to.

When they do move in, the new owners will be too busy channel hopping and surfing the web to talk to the neighbours. Just one in three people bother to say hello, with the rest either ignoring them completely or waiting until someone introduces them.

Russell Scott, director of fish4homes.co.uk, says: "It seems that the nation's obsession with TV means that we spend less time than it takes to watch two episodes of Coronation Street in researching their new neighbourhood. That's a frightening statistic when 70 per cent of us will stay in a house for more than five years**.

"Finding out whether a property has had planning application turned down might not seem as interesting as the latest soap storyline, but it could have a vital bearing on whether a property is really right for you."

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