Potential salability problem with house

mattastic

thanks for all your replies. I'm slightly worried now.

This survey that dowbnvalued the house, was different to the one northern rock did.

Can I still back out now?

sanfrancisco

Have you Exchanged? This is when you get sent a contarct to sign. If unsure, ring the Solicitor and check. If you have not, then you can pull out and will just loose any money paid up to this point.

You could try to negotiate first. If no luck, chuck it in.

mattastic

No I haven't exchanged. Thanks for the reply.

I find it well strange that there could be a 20 grand difference in the survey value and the selling price.

silvercar

A house is worth what someones prepared to pay for it.

Surveyors tend to be cautious if you are going for a high loan to value ratio. If you were going for a mortgage less than half the value, you would probably have got a higher valuation.

mjfusent

mattastic wrote:

No I haven't exchanged. Thanks for the reply.

I find it well strange that there could be a 20 grand difference in the survey value and the selling price.

I understand what you mean but bear in mind the vendors can set the asking price to whatever they like for the property. Usually they will pay attention to the estate agents valuation but not always as they are not obliged to. The survey valuation is usually the ony information a buyer has to ensure they are paying a realistic price. I'm no expert but I personally would be very wary of paying more for a property than it was valued at. In my limited (bought 3 houses) experience, the survey value usually matches the agreed sale price, i.e. confirms the price is appropriate.

What did the other survey value the house at?

mattastic

Northern rock valued the house at the price we paid for it.

nej

Turn the garage into a feature - if you live next door to a garage then they are likely to do a good job on your car if you see them every day.

mjfusent

Fair enough, difficult one, you could always contact the new surveyor (after all you paid for the survey) and ask why he downvalued the property. I've previously spoken to a surveyor to clarify a comment he made on a homebuyers report I had done so I'm assuming you should be able to ask this question.

Also, as I mentioned earlier I would have thought the lower valuation would affect your morgage offer, i.e. the lenders would see their valuation as 100% of the properties value.

I personally really would be tempted to go back to the estate agent and say "the valuation indicates the property is worth no more than £106,000 so I need to reduce my offer to this figure". BUT that's only my opinion - its your money and your decision.

Best of luck, whatever you decide.

PoorDave

noyk wrote:

Now i know you may have used the wrong word or something, but why on earth is down valuing a property "terrible"? Surely it's a great thing for a buyer, they now have a better negotiating position and so will likely be able to pay less for the property. If you were buying a car this would be a good thing right? Ah, i see your signature, your income is based on advising people to pay more!

More on topic, in my personal opinion you shouldn't pay more than what the suveyor values without knowing a lot more about what may happen to the garage in the future.

The point being made was that certain lenders are more likely to do it, not that they were bad for doing it.

The slightly sophisticated point also being made on this post is: If you pay less when you buy (compared to comparable sized houses) then you'll probably get less for it when you come to sell (again compared to comparable sized properties at the time of selling). What you want to avoid is being next to a garage that dealt with 3 cars a week that were all houses on its forecourt tidily, that deals with 30 cars a day that are parked all over the place making the area look worse than it did when you bought the property.

Personally on the basis of the survey valuation i would try to renegotiate down to 106k, and be prepared to walk away if the vendors refuse to renegotiate at all.

mattastic

Ok thanks for all the replies

If I ask to renegotiate, the problem is our morgage people (norhtern rock) valued the house at the selling price. So the estate agents will just argue that there isnt a problem. I dont know which survey to believe???!!!