How to check Wi-Fi before renting or buying a home

On a viewing you check the light, the noise, the water pressure. Wi-Fi rarely makes the list, and it's hard to fix later. Here's what to look at in ten minutes.

Published · 2 min read

In this guide
  1. Where the line comes in
  2. What the walls and floors are made of
  3. The neighbors
  4. Signs that cables will be easy
  5. Ask the people who live there
  6. After you move in

Wi-Fi rarely comes up during a viewing, and then it's the thing you live with every day. You can't test your own router in a place you don't live in yet, but you can spot the features that make good coverage easy or hard.

Where the line comes in

Ask, or look for, the socket where fiber, cable or phone line enters. By the front door of a long apartment? In the basement? In the middle? It decides where the router will start, and how much work it will take to move the Wi-Fi somewhere better. See internet line in the wrong corner.

What the walls and floors are made of

  • Knock on the internal walls. A hollow sound usually means plasterboard or light partitions; a dull, solid one means brick, block or concrete.
  • Ask about the floors in a multi-story home, and about underfloor heating or recent insulation work, which can add metal layers. See Wi-Fi and walls.
  • Note the layout. Long corridors, L-shapes and separate wings are harder to cover than compact square plans.

The neighbors

Open the Wi-Fi list on your phone in the main rooms. Twenty or thirty networks means a crowded building, where 2.4 GHz will be busy every evening. It doesn't rule a place out; it tells you to rely on 5 GHz and good placement. See neighbors' Wi-Fi interference.

Signs that cables will be easy

  • Ethernet sockets in rooms or a small network cabinet: a gift.
  • TV coax outlets in most rooms, usable for networking with the right adapters. See Ethernet over coax.
  • Accessible attic, crawlspace or service risers, if you're buying and may run cables.

Ask the people who live there

The current tenants or owners know which room has bad Wi-Fi. "Where does the Wi-Fi not work?" is a perfectly reasonable question on a viewing, and the answer is often precise.

After you move in

Before buying any gear, map the new home with the router in its first position. WiFi Heatmap shows which rooms need help and how much, so the first purchase is the right one. See how to find Wi-Fi dead zones.

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