Valuations of Houses

ukbondraider

Reading a few posts here and also using my own personal experience I can not help think how many of the concepts in house buying are really absurd and flawed for example valuations.

Lets think about it. When we ask an EA to value our house exactly how qualified are these folks. Do they not simply send someone who works in their office to find out the previous sold price metric upon which they add on a certain % of what they have read the market to have gone up by. Had my house recently valued and this is what the junior guy they sent round did. Some EA's even talk about a drive by valuation when valuing houses.

I can not help but think that the end result is that prices are not relflective of what a house is worth but instead what we are being told to pay for them. Lets face it we dont actually get too much of a say what a house is worth as buyers as we simply pay the cheapest we can in that time period.

Its just funny how as money saving concious folks we are we fight and squible to save the odd £5 or £10 on many things on a daily basis yet we happily let the EA's of which many are probably not the brightest people in society set out the costs for which we probably overpay on many tens of thousands.

I know a house is worth what someone else is prepared to pay but I find it bizarre how we allow the price of the most expensive purchase we will make in our lives be highly influenced by a rather simple system and by average people.

Doozergirl

That's why, in the whole MoneySaving tradition, we should not take what these people say as being correct and continue to compare prices just as we would when buying something small like a CD. If you're savvy enough not to pay over the odds for a smaller item, you're less likely to pay over the odds for such a large one.

The information that EAs use to value property is available to all of us, so with a liitle bit of research ,we can price a property to sell (if we put greed aside) and find a good deal on our next buy without relying on agents' advice.

It's harder to guess what a property is worth than what it will sell for.

Stonk

Hear hear!

The concept of people paying what they consider something to be worth to them, and thus setting the market price, went out of the window years ago for house prices. During the recent boom years, so many people have been saying "I know it's overpriced, but I will pay it anyway because it will probably go up even more next month". This collective irrational behaviour has led to the loss of normal rational price patterns, and an increase in the power of sellers and EAs to set, and get, ridiculous prices.

Things are calming down now. Buyers, I hope, are starting to behave more logically.

Dora_the_Explorer_5

Some people will own a house, others a home. Surely its value is dependant on how one views it.

ant_2-2

When we sold our first home in the later 1960s we put a sale board outside and decided to try and sell it ourselves

We had car loads of young couples passing our home which was at the bottom of a new estate who had a look and drove past, so I decided to walk round the lawn with our new baby in my arms looking at the flowers. It worked, people stopped admired the baby and asked about the price.

We sold it within a month even though there were two more cheaper round the corner,to a young couple, no estate agents fees

In the 1980s We tried to move house again and ended up on a list of 18 prospective applicants who all had their homes on the market already.
This time we decided to give up,. We haven't moved since.

Mrs Ant.