House down valued.

chamelious

Thanks, that all makes sense.

kingstreet

Agh. This is posted on M&E as well but with a lot more detail on here.

How far is CA3 from Warwick Road and have you checked the insurability from a flooding perspective?

I'm copying a post I've just added over there as you seem to be a little "unknowing" when it comes to valuations and surveyors. Your broker should be helping you through stuff like this. It's far too early to be thinking about renegotiation.

I suspect this is more than likely a surveyor "guess" at what might be wrong with a property and "guesstimate" at what it will cost to put right.

The valuation isn't always the be all and end all if reports & estimates are requested. They are an opportunity to demonstrate the property is better than the surveyor's 15 minute inspection suggested.

Over the years, I've had dozens of cases where the reports showed nothing needed and the surveyor returned the value to the agreed price once he had them.

For example, moisture meter stuck against wall = high moisture reading = failed damp course - surveyor's £2,000 estimate to put right.

Specialist report. Moisture reading due to soil bridging damp course. Remedy is reduce soil level by digging French drain, cost £50.

Electrical report "electrics not up to current standard = rewire = £4,000." Specialist report = new consumer unit required, cost £120.

Surveyors are not specialists, they are GPs and refer you to a Consultant, but for some reason think making a diagnosis themselves is helpful...

Ithaca

As i understand it, our options are to find the extra £5-6k ourselves (no), or offer the vendors the 90k, which i assume they'll say no to.

We were in a similar position last year as a vendor. Accepted an asking price offer at £235k but lender valuation came in at £231k.

Our buyers were maxed out at 90% deposit (and had already stretched to get there) so would have struggled to raise the additional deposit. We were desperate to move so didn't want to risk losing the "forever" house we'd found by going back onto the market or asking our buyers to find another lender (our house was worth the asking price, but there was no local sales data to support a challenge and there's a good chance another lender would have used the same surveyor for the valuation with the same result).

In the end we swallowed the difference... £4k in the context of a £500k "forever" house, especially in a rising market, was still painful but didn't feel like a deal breaker in the grand scheme of things. Just meant we've had to put back the new kitchen by a year or two but as we're hoping to be there until we are 80+ we felt it was worth the compromise.

I think the house we're in has already earned the £4k back in increased value anyway.

iantojones40

Ithaca wrote: »

We were in a similar position last year as a vendor. Accepted an asking price offer at £235k but lender valuation came in at £231k.

Our buyers were maxed out at 90% deposit (and had already stretched to get there) so would have struggled to raise the additional deposit. We were desperate to move so didn't want to risk losing the "forever" house we'd found by going back onto the market or asking our buyers to find another lender (our house was worth the asking price, but there was no local sales data to support a challenge and there's a good chance another lender would have used the same surveyor for the valuation with the same result).

In the end we swallowed the difference... £4k in the context of a £500k "forever" house, especially in a rising market, was still painful but didn't feel like a deal breaker in the grand scheme of things. Just meant we've had to put back the new kitchen by a year or two but as we're hoping to be there until we are 80+ we felt it was worth the compromise.

I think the house we're in has already earned the £4k back in increased value anyway.

So if I've read that correctly you've bought a house worth half a million pounds but it's now going to take you up to 2 years to scrape together just £4k for a new kitchen?

Mr.Generous

chamelious wrote: »

Out of interest, what is their alternative, hoping that someone else will be willing to take an immediate loss on it? Cash buyer perhaps?

Lots of cash buyers pay top whack do they? for cash, no survey, no messing about you generally pay below the valuation. (assuming its accurate). Cash buyers make low offers. If you got yourself into the position to buy for cash presumably you have some degree of sense.

Ithaca

iantojones40 wrote: »

So if I've read that correctly you've bought a house worth half a million pounds but it's now going to take you up to 2 years to scrape together just £4k for a new kitchen?

We didn't buy the house in cash.

Like a lot of buyers we stretched ourselves to get the house we wanted and we had a careful (but maxed-out) budget which balanced mortgage, deposit and equity with all our other outgoings and our appetite for risk. So in that context £4k was significant as it represented our emergency "the boiler's broken / roof's leaking / car needs repairing" fund. We had a baby 10 months after moving in so keeping that pot of cash available instead of immediately putting it into replacing a dated-but-functioning kitchen seemed like a sensible decision in retrospect.

Although the house is worth a good value, putting away an extra £160/month isn't something that we just wouldn't notice (I wish it was though!).

Crashy_Time

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-12-12/christmas-joy-eludes-london-housing-as-asking-prices-plunge

Grenage

Crashy_Time wrote: »

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-12-12/christmas-joy-eludes-london-housing-as-asking-prices-plunge

http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/panettone

Crashy_Time

Surrey_EA wrote: »

Or hope that another valuer sees the property as being worth more than £90k. Property valuation is an art, rather than a science, and it is entirely possible for two different surveyors to value the same property at different amounts.

Often how high a LTV amount is will affect how a surveyor values for the bank. If a buyer is only borrowing 20% the bank's risk is fairly low, if the LTV is 90% it is obviously much greater.

Really? :rotfl::rotfl: Thought it was a game of chance (ers)

Surrey_EA

Crashy_Time wrote: »

Really? :rotfl::rotfl: Thought it was a game of chance (ers)

What you happen to think is fairly obvious, and everyone has long since stopped taking any notice.