District Valuer

atdhe12345

Hi there I want to buy my council flat under right to buy scheme, and I have received a valuation from the council, the council said to me if I am not happy with councils valuation I can apply for second opinion which is District Valuer, but should I apply for District Valuer and hoping they valuation is Lower than council valuation. some people say that district valuer valuation is usually Lower than council valuation, I don't know if that is true, has anyone knows or had this experience before
Thanks

princeofpounds

My understanding is that the district valuers do tend to value lower more often than they value higher. 
This paper goes back a long time to 2006 but has some useful analysis:
https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1057/palgrave.jba.2940044.pdf see page 112 in particular.

The council is the selling party, so obviously they have a tendency to want a higher price. So they tend to price higher within the range that their valuation process permits. DVs don't care as much.

But you can't guarantee anything.

restless6

Yes I requested the district valuer because the council over valued my house . They were adding into the valuation all the improvements I had made myself over the years of living there - which I had already paid for myself and should’ve been deducted from the price .
i got £12.5k knocked off the valuation afterwards . 

princeofpounds

Yes, reading through the methodology in the paper I linked to, it seems that you should always emphasise the improvements you have done vs. what the council did.