Mortgage valuation survey

Dukes_of_hazard

I am having a basic mortgage valuation survey carried out on the property I am selling tomorrow. I am just wondering how much detail they go into.

Specifically will they pick up on the fact that a couple of upstairs windows are hard to close, that the front door is hard to lock and also will they look in the attic.

I had a chimney breast taken out about 5 years ago but never got a certificate from the council. Is it likely that they will spot this/insist on a building regs inspection.

Its a good house ! I am just paranoid that stupid little things will delay the sale !

Does the buyer even get a copy of this survey or is it purely for the lenders to know the house is worth the money ?

Would be interested to hear your expieriences of MV surveys

thanks

silvercar

If its a pure valuation then it won't show up hardly any detail, if its a home buyers report it will have pages and pages of @rse covering, Can't guarantee X, Y and Z and you should do a separate survey on electrics, gas, central heating, drains etc etc.

On your specific points I would say they are unlikely to see the front door is hard to lock and unlikely to open and close windows.

They usually do go in the loft and make comments like "it is hard to see all detail because the occupier has items in their view". They may well see the chimney breast has been removed. If so, they will probably add a comment that the solicitor should check that all necessary certificates were obtained. Whether they bother following up every little comment is up to them.

Nikki

The People that bought our house only had a basic mortgage valuation done. The bloke was only in the house about 10 mins, I think he just looked round the rooms(didn't touch anything)took a few measurements and that was about it. I think they only point out problems they can see i.e when we had a basic valuation done on the same house 10 years ago, they just mentioned problems they could see, like a large tree in the back garden and the guttering needed replacing, nothing was said about the inside of the house(and it wasn't in great condition)

mjhatcher

The mortgage valuation is just that - its purpose is to confirm to the mortgage lenders that the property is worth roughly what you are paying for it. It is usually one or two pages that has tick boxes (i.e. number of rooms) and a one paragraph description of the property in general.

If you actually want any information about the property itself and its condition you must as a minimum take out a homebuyers survey. For older properties, and/or ones that obviously need some work it may be worth a building survey (either a general one or one focussed on the work that is needed).

In your case, I would suggest you get a homebuyers. It's a shame that your lender/broker didn't mention this before as you can usually save a few quid if you get them done at the same time. But it is definitely worth it - you'll get a good few pages of info. As silvercar says there will be lots of exclusions: a quality one I had was "we could not determine if the electric heaters worked as they were not switched on". :T