Remortgage Valuation Process

Sparky24

Can anyone advise what the valuation process is for a remortgage - either with the same lender or a different one. Since the purchase of my house and taking out the mortgage, I have carried out some work on the house (adding conservatory, converting garage, update bathroom, decor etc), which I hope will have added value.

When it come to valuation - will any of this be taken into account - or would it just be a book exercise based around 'like' properties recently sold, or the price I paid 12 months ago?

Would this differ if I remainded with the same lender as opposed to moving lender?

Thanks.

figgles

Without wanting to sound too negative, you might find that the work you've done wont have added much to the value (e.g. a conservatory costing £10K wont add £10K to your house value, and for some people it adds nothing as it's not something a lot of people want), plus house prices are a lot lower than 12 months ago in the main.

You could be lucky in that your work may have offset the market drop a bit, but you've obviously had a lot of outlay anyway. Depends on where you live and the area, but you could be looking at the house being worth 10-25% less than it was 12 months ago before the work is considered.

No matter which route you take, you'll end up with a surveyor coming round to look at the house and giving the mortgage provider a valuation. If you wanted a free and rough guideline first, why not ask a local estate agent round for a valuation with a view to you selling it.

RufusA

If switching products with the same lender, most will simply use a book exercise to revalue as you aren't typically paying for a surveyor. If your's the most recent sale in the road, they'll adjust your purchase price using a standard index.

If changing lenders, the process varies with lender. Some will do book valuation, some a drive past, some a full visit / valuation.

When we recently swapped to the Post Office, they sent round a valuer, BUT he stayed about 3 minutes in total, was reluctant to go upstairs to count bedrooms, and had to be dragged to the garden so he could notice the garage etc. I strongly suspect he did a book valuation and was simply visiting to check for anything that would be materially detrimental to that book valuation.

If you need a good/thorough valuation to remortgage and have a border-line LTV, you may be out of luck sadly. With a limited supply of money available for lending, most mortgage companies are happy to just accept the low-risk / easy business, and most valuers are happy to undervalue on the assumption that the value will have dropped another few percent come completion!

YMMV - Rufus.

Dranny

Rufus -

We recently went through a re-mortgage through the Post Office, and the guy that came round was a delight. We couldn't get rid of him!!!

Swings and roundabouts.

Conrad

12 months is a very short time to be thinking about a remo. Are you not tied into your current deal?

Work might have added value but you will need to insist a valuer visits if needbe, but on the other hand no amount of work particularly alters that value in many cases as a given house in a given road has a 'ceiling' no matter what.

It sounds like you want to borrow more, but you will be aware all the talk now is of being frugal and spurning the borow now pay later culture, so maybe have a good think first.