Halifax mortgage - what do you get for the £200 basic valuation fee?

RelievedSheff

Missy_Firefly said:

Well. I lost it a bit earlier on the phone to Halifax due to the stress I'm under, trying to argue that I should have received a rebuild cost and nowhere did it say what was and wasn't included for my £200 (my mortgage broker didn't tell me). But Halifax were having none of it and the young girl who answered had never owned a house and didn't know what 'rebuild cost' was! She was definitely lacking customer care skills and I just felt like I was a number! Her manager didn't even want to take my complaint as said their word was final. Lovely first dealings with my Mortgage provider to be! I've worked in customer care and just found them jobsworths. 

Anyway so I rang Countrywide surveyors who I know had surveyed our last house for the bank of our buyer and they also said they don't give the purchaser a rebuild cost for band 1 basic valuations. 

I guess I just expected to get the info that I need to apply for buildings insurance, seen as it's a prerequisite to having a mortgage but I was wrong. 😔

On a side note...
My mortgage broker has given up on me, now he's getting his commission. Read this conversation and tell me how you sounds to you?

WhatsApp.. 
Me:
"Hi! I can't find on the mortgage offer anything about rebuild cost for getting insurance. Where would that info be?
Him:
Should be on the survey report you have done
Me:
 a full building survey doesn't include a valuation. The £200 we paid to Halifax was supposed to provide that.
Him: (no reply)
Me: (next day) Morning. Any update on the above? I couldn't get through to Halifax yesterday as I'm not vunerable enough apparently on option 4 and 4.
Him: Just stick any amount down"

Is that not pretty unprofessional?
I haven't responded. He's getting £550 commission and we are yet to pay £395 for his services plus he's getting commission on our life insurances too.
I think it's because he rang to ask for a 5 Star review last week in order to win a competition at his estate agents, but I couldn't find the bit to write this review and then thought, I haven't actually finished the deal yet so why should I be pushed at this stage of stress to rate him!?

But seriously, if I put £50 down for the rebuild cost, I'm not going to be insured! I think that reply is crazy! 

Sorry I know this is way off OP.

Regarding OP... I've got the floor area from the EPC report as 131m² so am going to use the RICS rebuild calculator as what choice so I have?!🤔

I think I would ignore your questions as well if you contacted me with that tone!

boots_babe

I think you're getting worried about this unnecessarily. The lender valuation is for the benefit of the lender, not the buyer, it's so that they can satisfy themselves that the property is worth enough to cover the mortgage.

For the rebuild cost, every online insurance quote system I've seen, automatically populates an estimate of the rebuild cost based upon the data you input. Of course the actual cost could vary due to specific circumstances of your property, so if you've reason to believe your property has something non-standard that could affect the rebuild cost, then you would be wise to look at the rebuild calculator on the ABI site - https://abi.bcis.co.uk/

For what it's worth I very much agree that your FAs response was unprofessional, but equally I think you've built a mountain out of a molehill here, hopefully the link above will help you. Good luck.