Valuation Concerns (E.Surv)

pct123

My partner and I have had an offer accepted for £185k on a house we absolutely love and that was on the market for £195k. It's recently been completely refurbished and had a brand new kitchen, bathroom, boiler, central heating system, and flooring put in. Houses in the area have sold for £185k but not in the past four months, most likely due to the fact that the houses that have sold needed modernizing or didn't have parking/smaller living space/1 bed etc.

We have a deposit of £30k and so our loan from the bank will be for £155k.

Our mortgage is going to be with Halifax and we have a Valuation & Survey booked for next Wednesday. We didn't get a choice in who the surveyor was as they are a Halifax appointed one and we have since learnt the company is E.Surv. I hadn't heard of them before so I had a look at their reviews and to our shock they have appallingly bad reviews and seem to be notable for down valuing properties. Our mortgage offer document states the offer is only valid if "minimum value of the property required to borrow the illustrated amount £183k". This amount doesn't seem to give much leeway in the event of a down valuation.

It's making us really quite anxious that the property is going to be down valued by them and we will possibly have to back out or start the whole mortgage application process again with another lender.

Has anyone had any experience with them? Has anyone been in the same situation as us and got through it OK? Any advice for what we should do if it is down valued by them?

suestew

why can't you use your own surveyor? is it part of the mortgage agreement to use Halifax one?

davidmcn

pct123 wrote: »

It's making us really quite anxious that the property is going to be down valued by them and we will possibly have to back out or start the whole mortgage application process again with another lender.

Why wouldn't you prefer to negotiate a reduction in the price instead? Try not to think of it as the surveyor "downvaluing" the property but them pointing out to you that you've overvalued it.

Not much point fretting about it until you know the result anyway.

pct123

We contacted them after reading the reviews and asked if we could use our own surveyor or a different one and they said "This company is the one we use to complete our valuations and no other options are available"

muhandis

Don’t worry about the reviews, all E—surv does is act as a cut price valuer for lenders that evaluate a property based on lender guidelines.

We had valuations done for two mortgages recently from halifax and Barclays, both were assigned to E-surv so there’s no guarantee that another lender won’t use the same ones.

Just wait and see what happens.

pct123

davidmcn wrote: »

Why wouldn't you prefer to negotiate a reduction in the price instead? Try not to think of it as the surveyor "downvaluing" the property but them pointing out to you that you've overvalued it.

Not much point fretting about it until you know the result anyway.

We're not really sure the seller would accept a lower offer than what we've offered. We did originally try with a cheeky lower offer and the seller refused it. In truth the house is easily worth £185k in our area, we were just trying to be cheap and get some money off.

We're most concerned that E-Surv has the most awful reviews and seem to be notorious for down valuing properties by significant amounts meaning that people lose out on sales or buying.

jonnygee2

We're most concerned that E-Surv has the most awful reviews and seem to be notorious for down valuing properties by significant amounts meaning that people lose out on sales or buying.

E-Surv is a huge surveying firm mainly used by mortgage lenders. Mortgage lenders can have their own criteria/assumptions that they ask valuers to use and manage the relationship with the valuation firm. Of course you would get no say in it - they aren't interested in what a valuer you contract might have to say - they want to know what their valuers have to say!

Basically ignore the firm valuing. From your perspective its Halifax who are valuing your house. And I wouldn't assume a problem until you find one!

luiza8

We had a survey done by them around a month ago. Very detailed and I would recommend them. Ours was with Halifax and they said we could use whoever we want, however it was 200 cheaper to go with the ones Halifax recommended as they discounted it.

They did value the house at exactly hot price we had agreed. Strange maybe, maybe not.

phoebe1989seb

Our buyers' survey was carried out by e-surv a few years back. On the face of it the guy was very thorough, spending around 3.5 hours at our house.

He valued it at the agreed offer price and the sale proceeded ok.

However, he made some ridiculous errors - for example he got the house age wrong by a few hundred years and said there was an asbestos water cylinder. There wasn't

Thrugelmir

luiza8 wrote: »

They did value the house at exactly hot price we had agreed. Strange maybe, maybe not.

Lender merely requires the valuation to support the amount of mortgage borrowing. Actual value being subjective. A property is only worth what someone will pay on the day. A few £ is neither here nor there.

Crashy_Time

Thrugelmir wrote: »

Lender merely requires the valuation to support the amount of mortgage borrowing. Actual value being subjective. A property is only worth what someone will pay on the day. A few £ is neither here nor there.

Exactly, many sellers can`t accept this yet though.