Finally moving house - new home undervalued by £15k! Advice/experience sought

PottyHouse_2

morg_monster wrote: »

I have no advice but argh i'm worrying about this, we're having a survey done on the house we're buying today... I have everything crossed but its kakifn it hav=rd tii tyoe,.,.

(translation: making it hard to type...)

Yes, we had our house valued on Tuesday and I'm worrying the same that they're going to undervalue our house too!!

Who knows what the hell is going on in this market, its madness!!!!

PottyHouse_2

PottyHouse wrote: »

Hi all ,

After being on the market for the last 10 months or so and and hopefully "sold" for the third time we are now going through the conveyancing procedure and applying for mortgage etc etc.

Our offer of £160k for a "very large" 3 bed semi home in very much sought after area has been valued by Surveyor at £145k!! We were taken aback as was the Estate Agent acting on behalf of our Seller. We gained evidence of recent sales, houses currently on the market and the EA asked the Surveyor to look at the evidence and very diplomatically asked if he could "revisit" the price he had printed. Apparently the Surveyor evidence was based on recent sales in the "area" (those properties being in not a very sought after road, completely different houses and a lot smaller - hence we are not buying one of those - plus there have been no sales this year on the road we are buying on - no comparison really!!) plus he does not even know the local area well.

We have not yet received our mortgage offer but obviously it is not looking good and I am expecting the Building Society to say if we want the house that much we have to put the extra £15k towards it ourselves - which will cause us to withdraw our offer and break the whole chain.

We all wanted to complete well before Christmas due to the stamp duty exemption and VAT change so for us this is a nightmare and we are going to loose the house that we have been desperately seeking, with the slowdown in the market there are no others on the market that suit our needs/location etc etc.

I just wondered if anyone had any similiar experience /advice they can give - our IFA is defending the company and telling us the EA will try and convince us the house is worth more as he wants the sale, but we are not stupid, having watched the market for nearly a year and being RIGHTMOVE obsessed we know the house we want is worth at lot more than £145k and it seems really unfair to us that we are going to loose it, down to perhaps an error in judgement.

Yes - I am not a Surveyor, neither is our IFA and neither is the Estate Agent but we trust them to do their job, be open and honest and hopefully admit if they have made a mistake ..... ??

P.S not a new home - new home as in our new home!

Gorgeestwo

PottyHouse wrote: »

Glad you got what you wanted, this has made me feel better :rotfl:
I will discuss with my IFA if we can get a different rate based on LTV etc etc, yes we could manage an extra £50 on our mortgage payments but not £15,000 from our pockets !! We already have a feeling our Seller will not be able to negotiate on selling price as they are unfortunately NE and splitting up, debts etc etc etc etc but not sure if this is their last chance before the end of the year to sell - so feel that the final decision and money issue lands at our feet.
Thanks again

We didn't have to 'find' the extra 12k either, although thats how I first thought of it, we still paid the amount we had agreed (less the 2k the vendors dropped) and ended up borrowing 4k less than we had initially asked for. That doesn't really make sense does it
Initial offer was 148k
Initial mortage application was for 105k
Valuation was 136k
Purchase price was 146k
Mortgage was 101k to keep it under the 75%

So only really had to 'find' an extra 2k, yes although we've paid 12k over the valuation, to us the house is worth what we paid, its in a location we wanted and we were pretty limited by schools, the fact I don't drive and other factors.

Hopefully because of your LTV you will be able to sort something out.

Off to have a coffee I think as I'm not too good at explaining things this morning lol

PottyHouse_2

Thanks for all your advice which has settled me a bit !!

I have calculated our LTV at the £145k selling price so if we did get our mortgage (which is most probable) based on £145k at a little sacrifice to us (and perhaps a little negotiation from our seller??) we could still just about do it with hopefully a few grand left over to decorate as we wanted to do - luckily for us we have a lot of equity which is a good deposit.

Why do I feel like I have been in a fight ??!!!

GDB2222

PottyHouse wrote: »

Who knows what the hell is going on in this market, its madness!!!!

Is it madness, or are we starting to recover from a period of mad over-valuations? Maybe it's sanity.

PottyHouse_2

Gorgeestwo wrote: »

We didn't have to 'find' the extra 12k either, although thats how I first thought of it, we still paid the amount we had agreed (less the 2k the vendors dropped) and ended up borrowing 4k less than we had initially asked for. That doesn't really make sense does it
Initial offer was 148k
Initial mortage application was for 105k
Valuation was 136k
Purchase price was 146k
Mortgage was 101k to keep it under the 75%

So only really had to 'find' an extra 2k, yes although we've paid 12k over the valuation, to us the house is worth what we paid, its in a location we wanted and we were pretty limited by schools, the fact I don't drive and other factors.

Hopefully because of your LTV you will be able to sort something out.

Off to have a coffee I think as I'm not too good at explaining things this morning lol

Yes, I know what you mean.
I have just sat down and worked the figures out taking the £15k from our deposit rather than trying to find an extra £15k - I think that is the way to do it and yes, our mortgage required has come down too.
It doesnt bother me really because I KNOW the house is worth more than £145k - you probably felt the same! It just throws everything up in the air as it's something else that you cannot predict - think everythings going along smoothly and WHAM! back to earth with a great big bang!!!
Thanks again

Gorgeestwo

PottyHouse wrote: »

Yes, I know what you mean.
I have just sat down and worked the figures out taking the £15k from our deposit rather than trying to find an extra £15k - I think that is the way to do it and yes, our mortgage required has come down too.
It doesnt bother me really because I KNOW the house is worth more than £145k - you probably felt the same! It just throws everything up in the air as it's something else that you cannot predict - think everythings going along smoothly and WHAM! back to earth with a great big bang!!!
Thanks again

Yes we did feel the same, this house is worth more than the valuation and more still to us, we were also lucky and had enough equity from our sale to be able to swallow up the extra amount needed but like you say it just makes everything uncertain again.
Goodluck, let us know how you get on with the bank.

GDB2222

Peculiar, that. How do you 'know' the professional valuer is wrong? And if you think there's a conspiracy, why do you think that is?

Cannon_Fodder

Have you tried showing the survey to the vendor and asking them to consider re-negotiating?

They might have gone through the same process at their level of the chain, and got a response from above that allows them some leeway...

PottyHouse_2

GDB2222 wrote: »

Peculiar, that. How do you 'know' the professional valuer is wrong? And if you think there's a conspiracy, why do you think that is?

Wrong or error of judgement ??
I don't think I mentioned conspiracy, you're making me paranoid - or is that you??

I would say most people who have had their house on the market for a year or so would know the local market and house prices. We are not paid an enormous amount of money to do that as job.

I have always said a house is only worth what someone is prepared to pay but if we went to a seller £20k under their "reasonable" asking price they would tell us to p**s off and would not take us seriously. Yet a Surveyor/Valuer can do it and it's considered their expert knowledge !!?

Surveyors are human like everyone else but now I have an opinion of them that they are up their own a""e. They are there to protect the banks and us normal people are paying the price - we only want to move house, don't think we are being unreasonable !!