surveyors deliberately undervaluing property... is there no regulation on this?

property.advert

edgex wrote: »

so
you, not a valuer, have come up with a value for a property
a valuer, who is a valuer, has come up with a different value

& your saying that the valuer is wrong
:rotfl:

Yes,

The problem is that you are often charged for the valuation but have no contract with the valuer.

I had some clown value a property at £209k when it was worth about £325k, just because the mortgage they thought I required needed a minimum valuation of £209k.

Many valuers are just estate agents who would value it at one price for one reason and another for another. The system is largely imperfect and those doing the valuation are hardly impartial.

Emy1501

property.advert wrote: »

Yes,

The problem is that you are often charged for the valuation but have no contract with the valuer.

I had some clown value a property at £209k when it was worth about £325k, just because the mortgage they thought I required needed a minimum valuation of £209k.

Many valuers are just estate agents who would value it at one price for one reason and another for another. The system is largely imperfect and those doing the valuation are hardly impartial.

Surveyors are independent. Their job for mortgage valuations is to confirm a property is worth a valuation with is needed for mortgage purposes. They do not always actually value the property. I have had a fair few surveys where they have simply put the property is worth x for mortgage valuation purposes. This is often well under the true value.

Therefore if the surveyor thought for mortgage purposes your property only needed to be worth 209K then thats what he would have valued it at for mortgage purposes.

Valuers are not EA's they are Surveyors. Many will use a number of local EA's to come to their figure plus LR figures.

Personally I do not get where the OP is coming from. Surely he must understand that just like buying a new car you pay a premium for buying new house therefore the mortgage valuation will never reflect the New price figure as it got to reflect a price the lender could seller for as second hand? Also house prices are still lower than this time last year in many areas let alone at the beginning or middle of 2008.

overit_2

Hi all,

Thanks for the replies. Of course we are aware that when you purchase a new house you pay a premium. We intend to stay there for some time. My issue was that the mortgage company should be clear that it is their policy to value it as 'second-hand'. The developer provided details of other valuations within the development, carried out by other lenders, who do not adopt this policy and every other property had been valued at, or around, the amount we have offered in the first place.

The issue with our sale is that as I mentioned previously we have already remortgaged at a higher value, next door sold in Jan 08 for the same amount (we live in a fairly affluent area of London where, luckily, prices have recovered to some extent. Or not, according to the valuer) He also said there were no comparable properties? The price I quoted was for the actual sold price of next door. We researched before going on the market and as I mentioned the estate agent provided details of three other actual sold prices of comparable properties. All this, to me, suggests the valuer was not researching the area properly and it's all too easy to simply go in lower and cover your !!!.

Anyway, we took this further and it has been reassessed so it's all back on, to anyone out there who has done their research yet suffered the same problems, it's worth challenging the outcome if you know it to be dubious :beer:

Cannon_Fodder

using a Jan 2008 comparable...no wonder the valuer thought it had gone down.

Even London highpoints haven't recovered that much.

If you have a decent LTV, the Lender may be exercising discretion.


[IMG]http://www1.landregistry.gov.uk/houseprices/housepriceindex/report/default.asp?g=1&gt=1&a=London&ac=Kensington And Chelsea&s=01 January 2008&e=01 October 2009&t=4[/IMG]