Valuation Surveys. How much?!

Jimboceh

We sold our house at the end of February and our mortgage provider told us we have three months to find another property and then we would be able to port our mortgage to the new one.

We have found a new property and our mortgage man has just informed us we need to pay £430 for a valuation survey! This is the price of a survey for a house valued at between 300k and 400k. The banding the mortgage man showed me included 90K houses which now don't exist in my area in the south west.

Much like stamp duty thresholds are seemingly unfair the £430 we are going to have to pay for a valuation survey seems extortionate for someone to walk round the house counting the number of bedrooms!

Does anyone know who sets these figures and whether they are going to be updated anytime soon?

danuk

Nationwide just charged me £340 for a valuation survey on a house costing £179k

helping_hubby

I thought the prices were decided by the mortgage companies as they all seem to be different. Ours was £295 for Abbey. House cost £178k.

pinkshoes

Ours was £415 with Halifax, flat cost £215k.

I don't think there's any way round it...

Red_Cat

You are right, they all depend on the deals offered. I paid nothing to have a £200k house valued by the Coventry Building Society last month.

Jimboceh

Yep, we have to pay a val survey because they have us sucked in if we want to get our redemption penalty back. I don't understand why the prices vary so wildly. Indeed it must be something to do with the deals on offer from the various lenders. Thanks for the replies.

ruthc_2

We are trying to remortgage and guessed the vale to be around £270k so had to pay £615.00. Under £250k would have been £555. The surveyor has valued it at £245k.

It seems they think of a number and double it!

SpanglyBex

Jimboceh, if it helps you could try asking your lender if, if you commission your own survey, they will accept what they call a copy retype... you'd obviously have to use a surveyor on their approved panel but they should be willing to give you that info - after all, you are an existing and potential customer!

That's what we're doing on our purchase as we want a full building survey & our lenedr doesn't offer them. Basically we've sourced a surveyor ourselves, they'll do the survey & then for a fee of £41 the lender will accept a valuation summary pulled from the report, addressed to them. So they get what they want & we get a survey for not much more than the cost of the valuation + survey they were going to charge for. To give you an indication, we were quoted £560 for a Homebuyers & valuation by our lender, but arranging privately, although a bit more hassle, is only costing £700 for the full monty, plus all the money is going towards a report for our benefit rather than being directed towards the lender & their valuation!


(I know you say you are only going for a valuation & not having a survey but this way still might work out cheaper for you than the extortionate sum the lender has quoted, plus you'd have a survey to boot!). I'm sure you could get a Homebuyers done privately by a local surveyor for less than the lender is quoting - our lender was happy for us to get the local firm we wanted to use (cheap but good!) added to their panel as well. Maybe we've just got a really flexible lender though?

Hope this helps in any case. :beer:

fkelanne

ours was £234 for a 86k house

Jimboceh

SpanglyBex wrote: »

Jimboceh, if it helps you could try asking your lender if, if you commission your own survey, they will accept what they call a copy retype... you'd obviously have to use a surveyor on their approved panel but they should be willing to give you that info - after all, you are an existing and potential customer!

That's what we're doing on our purchase as we want a full building survey & our lenedr doesn't offer them. Basically we've sourced a surveyor ourselves, they'll do the survey & then for a fee of £41 the lender will accept a valuation summary pulled from the report, addressed to them. So they get what they want & we get a survey for not much more than the cost of the valuation + survey they were going to charge for. To give you an indication, we were quoted £560 for a Homebuyers & valuation by our lender, but arranging privately, although a bit more hassle, is only costing £700 for the full monty, plus all the money is going towards a report for our benefit rather than being directed towards the lender & their valuation!


(I know you say you are only going for a valuation & not having a survey but this way still might work out cheaper for you than the extortionate sum the lender has quoted, plus you'd have a survey to boot!). I'm sure you could get a Homebuyers done privately by a local surveyor for less than the lender is quoting - our lender was happy for us to get the local firm we wanted to use (cheap but good!) added to their panel as well. Maybe we've just got a really flexible lender though?

Hope this helps in any case. :beer:

Thanks SpanglyBex. this is exactly what we will try. We haven't discounted a full structural survey but we didn't want to pay for that on top of the val survey. Thanks again for your clear thinking.