Fixed ended- Nationwide won't value property for refix

britishteapower

Hi all,

Apologies if this is dead simple or indeed has been covered at length already. As title suggests my fixed term deal has ended and we are interested in refixing before the rates rise.

We have had our loft converted increasing the value of the property. This would push us into the 60% and below LTV bracket if taken into account. However we aren't in this bracket if value is However lady on phone at Nationwide said they wouldn't value the place and they would just go on the Value that they hold for it.(i.e. before the extra bedroom was added) - using the house price index.

Can anyone advise on this- I am prepared to go through the MMR chat with NW about outgoings and ingoings- it seems that if I went execution only then I would have no option to put my higher property value in when applying.

It isn't a massive difference between the rates- should i stand my ground or push it with NW / looks elsewhere?

Thanks for your time and sorry for the ramble!

nidO

I was in a similar situation to you at the start of the year, in that on the phone Nationwide's staff adamantly refused to consider re-valuing our property (at our expense) and would only go by their index pricing.

The caveat in this however was that they would re-value a property if it had had an extension/conversion carried out (which we hadn't), so i'm unsure why you might be getting stuck on this.

What we ended up doing however was pushing the point and speaking to an advisor face-to-face in branch, who said that in fact yes they can put in a valuation other than the index valuation on the application if they're given a good reason - If it's within certain defined value boundaries based on the number of bedrooms (which she didn't know, as it's all internal to their software) the system would just allow the change with no further checking (which ended up happening with us, yay) or if it's outside those, the system would spit back that a valuation needs to be carried out which they can then organise.

At our first meeting in-branch the advisor told us people over the phone should be able to make the same change and gave us the exact name of the field on their screen they should be changing (we weren't ready to put our application in on the day we saw her) so we called back the phone staff a few days later to go through the application, ran into the same roadblock of "we can't possibly change the valuation", so I gave them the name of the field to change and their answer was that they have that valuation field on their screens but the system won't let them change it.

So, back to the branch we went and had the deal switch processed with the new valuation which the advisor could change in branch - The end result is basically you need to speak to an advisor in branch as they have more access than people on the phone, and you need to keep pushing the issue if you get told no at first, though I have no idea if MMR might have changed any of this from January.

Our pushing has ended up saving us almost 7 grand over the course of the better fixed rate we now have, compared to the fix we would have been on if nationwide wouldn't re-value the place.

britishteapower

Thanks for this info. The difference is exactly 0.1% across the various rates between the valuations. Is it worth my time/effort to chase the 60% bracket LTV?

nidO

I guess that's up to you.
We ended up speaking to umpteen different people on the phone along with 2 in-branch meetings (though with hindsight just going straight to the branch would have sorted us out without bothering with the back-and-forths on the phone) to get the answer we wanted but saved a ton of money as a result (the interest rate difference was more like 0.4% on a large-ish mortgage), so it was a no-brainer to push for us.

boxfreshchris

Nationwide CAN change the valuation over the phone, they did so with us last week.

Our current deal ended, so I rang to switch product to a 3yr fixed. Their on file valudation put us at 75.8% LTV, obviously we wanted 75%. I had to talk him through the changes we'd made that we felt increased the property value (new windows/doors etc) and he agreed to increase the valuation to give us the 75% LTV we wanted. Sorted.

Penelopa.Pitstop

I was refused re-valuation after full refurbishment (new heating, windows, everything really) when I was switching to a new fix. I was told I can only get new valuation if I extended property, etc. Since it's a flat, there's no way to extend it and in the end I took their book valuation.

I had no idea that going to the branch would help. I would do it for sure. I can try pushing the refurbishment and re-valuation next year when switching the deal.

lentrix92

I just switched to HSBC on a 5yr fix @ 2.94, must admit my LTV is 48%, but i didn't need a valuation as they said my property valuation was well within their calacutaion