Help to Buy Valuation way too high

ciscosurplus

Situation: 5 year interest period coming to an end in Sept 2020, H2B Valuation massively over estimated
I would be interested to hear from anyone to is trying to redeem help to buy or who has at the end of the 5 year period. 

The original house purchase was 575,000 (new build) 20% Help 2 buy and 10% Deposit.

I currently have 358,000 on the mortgage and 40K in cash. 

we are looking to remortgage to swallow the 20% help to buy (redeem) and use the 40K to bring LTV down. The same type of new build has been selling for approx 640-650 (several on the estate). The mortgage company value at 635,000, however RICS valuer has put it at 735,000 as they are forced to use a formula to value on £ per Msq this basically means the govt get 20K more than they should! anyone had a similar experience? no way is the house worth this much. 

Guinness-Cat

Have they been selling for 640-650 during the current pandemic? why not wait for 12 months and swallow the cost (1.85%? of the HTB part) and see if the valuation comes down then. Certainly RICS should have caught up with the real market values.

Either that or find a friendly RICS person.

Thrugelmir

Wait to see how the market developes over the coming months. In the meantime reduce your mortgage balance as much as is possible. 

jaxkesa

Get another surveyor, one who specialises in HtB valuations.

I don't know why they would be forced to use a formula to value on £ per Msq (mine certainly wasn't). They should be basing it on similar properties.

[Deleted User]

Just pay the interest on the HTB at the moment. Its similar to mortgage rates anyway. 

When the market works out what its doing and if prices do adjust, then get a different surveyor so you pay a fair price 

Suzuka96

Ours came in too high (20k more than remortgage valuation) so I sent the gentleman three other properties at a better valuation for us and he changed it.  What I’m surprised is that they had direct comparablea across the road sold within last 3 months but the valued decided to use some over a mile away and old houses! 

orange-sox

If you're desperate to redeem and lock in a decent rate on your mortgage, then I would encourage you to use a RICS Surveyor who specialises in HTB valuations. I can highly recommend Brendan @ Aspire Surveyors in Manchester (He covers the whole of the UK and is doing video inspections at the moment within the remit of COVID-19 safety). We've just used them for our HTB redemption valuation and he gave us a very favourable price based on the current market and recent sales rather than some made up formula. 

PJBRFC

When we had ours surveyed due to us selling it in, he asked us what we thought it was worth and what we were selling it for. He valued it at exactly that. This was in December. 

ciscosurplus

Densol said:

Just pay the interest on the HTB at the moment. Its similar to mortgage rates anyway. 

When the market works out what its doing and if prices do adjust, then get a different surveyor so you pay a fair price 

yeah I think doing the match makes most sense last the moment, I just re-fixed with current provider at a Lowe rate 

ciscosurplus

orange-sox said:

If you're desperate to redeem and lock in a decent rate on your mortgage, then I would encourage you to use a RICS Surveyor who specialises in HTB valuations. I can highly recommend Brendan @ Aspire Surveyors in Manchester (He covers the whole of the UK and is doing video inspections at the moment within the remit of COVID-19 safety). We've just used them for our HTB redemption valuation and he gave us a very favourable price based on the current market and recent sales rather than some made up formula. 

Oddly is it Bendan Ive been working with who has been very helpful but guess his hands are tied. 

Doing the maths I will pay the 1.75% interest, lock in a new rate on current mortgage and overpay based on what my larger capital mortgage would have been anyway, then re-asses when things settle down. 

Thanks for the posts.