Please Help with beneficial interest question!

brokeinbristol

My husband & I went BR in Jan, had the house valued just B4 we did: £120,000 from x3 estate agents. Post BR we were asked by OR to provide a valuation & current mortgage statement, so we asked x2 estate agents for a quick sale price: £115,000 and £116,000, our mortgage being £116,500 at the mo. Obviously hoping that this would put us in neg equity. However letter this Am from RTLU (now dealing with the house), saying that there is a £15,000 difference between our valuation and the OR valuation(s)! Where do they get these figures from?! So now wants us to get a chartered surveyor's valuation for him to establish how much equity there is. Sorry to ask stupid questions, but how much is one of these going to cost us? Where do we look for a reputable one? How do they value the house? i.e. do they look round, take into consideration the financial current climate? & lastly should we tell the surveyors what it's for and therefore make sure they don't over-value it or will there valuation be an exact one? i.e can they be swayed on the valuation they give? Any help gratefully appreciated!

Tobiwan_Kenobi

If they want a Chartered Surveyor's valuation then they can pay for it - You have already supplied 3 x valuations from estate agents! Don't let them bully you!

debtinfo

Tobiwan_Kenobi wrote: »

If they want a Chartered Surveyor's valuation then they can pay for it - You have already supplied 3 x valuations from estate agents! Don't let them bully you!

now thats not going to happen, remember they dont have to sell it back to you and they could quite easily shove it on the back burner for 2 years if you cant come to some agreement

nervousmother

We got a chartered surveyors valuation done, by a local firm we explained the situation and told them we would need a 'quick sale valuation' the surveyors valuation came back lower than the estate agents ones...
also check houseprices in your area to see the sold price. google house prices and see what comes up. It will help your cause if any properties have been sold through repossessions too..

nervousmother

I will also add that the Trustee in our BR used a drive by valuation that was also 15k more than the surveyors one...

fiveyearplan

Be sure to point out all the faults, defects, neighbour problems etc. We had a leaky radiator and we put a bowl under it and sneakily put in a bit of extra water and said the central heating didn't work etc.

Tobiwan_Kenobi

debtinfo wrote: »

now thats not going to happen, remember they dont have to sell it back to you and they could quite easily shove it on the back burner for 2 years if you cant come to some agreement

So you're saying that the person who has been made BR should pay out for a valuation even though others have already been made? Just because you are BR it doesn't make you beholden to every whim of the trustee, does it?

Maybe it's just me, but I pushed the trustee hard for a conclusion on the house because it was worrying the missus to death. They tried to stall and push for more but we got it resolved through some stern negotiation - At the end of the day it's business.

fiveyearplan

My OR wasn't interested in negotiating and I was in a rush to get it done while house prices were at their lowest. Fortunately he accepted my estate agents' valuations and it only came to a modest amount of BI and I did have the money. Had it been ££££'s then I may have tried negotiating more. He was also adamant that and estate agents fees or early redemption penalties could not be deducted from BI.

debtinfo

Tobiwan_Kenobi wrote: »

So you're saying that the person who has been made BR should pay out for a valuation even though others have already been made? Just because you are BR it doesn't make you beholden to every whim of the trustee, does it?

Maybe it's just me, but I pushed the trustee hard for a conclusion on the house because it was worrying the missus to death. They tried to stall and push for more but we got it resolved through some stern negotiation - At the end of the day it's business.

no, i am saying that the OR is the seller, you are the buyer, the OR has no need to sell quickly, therefore why would they limit themselves to selling at a knocked down price when they believe it to be worth more on the open market. over the last couple of years with downward prices the trustees were more mindfull to protect what they had by selling quickly in a falling market. now with house prices's rising over the last 12 months and this likely to continue (albeit slowley) what incentive is there to sell quickly. You may have noticed recently that the IS is trying to balance its books because of the recent extra work it has been doing. this has been highlighted on here with the rise in deposit fees, part of the same release but was rather less noted, probably due to its more complicated nature, is that the fees from realising assets have been changed to make sure that more of the first £3,000 realised goes to the bankruptcy fees. this is most pertinant in the realising of small amounts of equity from properties.

so what my ramblings are getting to is that it would be wise to expect OR's to be more strict with regards to realising BI than they have been in the last few years

fiveyearplan

debtinfo wrote: »

so what my ramblings are getting to is that it would be wise to exect OR's to be more strict with regards to realising BI than they have been in the last few years

I'm so glad to have got my BI out of the way then!

Tobiwan_Kenobi

debtinfo wrote: »

so what my ramblings are getting to is that it would be wise to expect OR's to be more strict with regards to realising BI than they have been in the last few years

I understand that, and it may have been what the trustee in my case was trying to do but we didn't want to let them. Our angle was that they could have £x now or they would have a long wait for any cash. We did let them know how much stress it was causing my wife and our family etc. and pushed very hard for an outcome. As a result I have a letter in front of me dated 26th Feb stating that the trustee no longer has an interest in our property.

I guess what I am trying to reinforce is that you don't have to give in to every demand placed upon you by the OR/Trustee, you can push back on them.