Halifax and may be other banks too?

dimwit.

Has anyone experienced this?

You take out a mortgage product or remortgage with say Halifax. They send out someone to value the property and it is valued more than you bought it by a small amount.

Fast forward a few years later, you want to move to a better product, but Halifax unilaterally have valued your home significantly lower than its previous or actual value now.

This then means that if you remain with them you remain on a more expensive product.

Lomcevak

How long is 'a few years later'? Does it span the whole banking crisis?

We remortgaged recently and got quotes from Halifax (who Mrs L banks with), First Direct (who I bank with), plus a couple of others, and my experience is that they were all much more conservative about valuations now than during the boom - our average valuation was 13% lower than when we purchased in 2006, whereas land-registry recent sale prices suggest that the real market here is at or above 2006 levels (e.g. our old house, sold for £200k in 2006, just sold again for £240k). But personally I think the lower valuations are more about overlending during the boom - in 2006 we pretty much just needed a pulse and to write our name to get the mortgage we needed - and protecting the loan book now than a deliberate attempt to undervalue to force you on to a higher LTV and more expensive rate. Depends on how cynical you are about banks, I guess.

Muser1

Halifax were very generous in their valuation of our house. I needed the deal badly at the time but I did wonder the same thing myself.