Applied for a remortgage but valuation was lower than it should be....

Rjhsteel

We applied for a remortgage to raise money to update the house, and put in a fair valuation of our property, the average as suggested by a few sites including Zoopla.  The mortgage company came back to us today with a much lower (£15k) valuation. Which we believe is a mistake. 

Can we challenge this?  

MWT

Do you have evidence of recent, local, comparable, completed sales at the valuation you were seeking?

Keep in mind that lenders are not motivated by the deadline for the SDLT holiday ending so they are inclined to price in the assumption that the market is currently a little over-heated and will likely fall back a little...

K_S

@rjhsteel You may be able to, but unless you have clear evidence of comparables that the valuer has ignored, it's unlikely to achieve the result you're looking for.

Billy_B_North

Rjhsteel said:

We applied for a remortgage to raise money to update the house, and put in a fair valuation of our property, the average as suggested by a few sites including Zoopla.  The mortgage company came back to us today with a much lower (£15k) valuation. Which we believe is a mistake. 

Can we challenge this?  

Average of asking prices, or the price paid?

ACG

You can appeal, but you are relying on the surveyor admitting they were wrong. You are also going to have to show them evidence that they have not seen themselves. 

In reality, you are probably better finding a new lender. 

The last appeal I did about 3 years ago, I wrote a about a page of A4, gave 5-6 comparable properties and explained that I grew up in the area (the surveyor was from about 60 miles away covering a patch he did not know) and I know the valuation he gave was low... He did not back down. After that I realised there is no point appealing as I have never had one overturned. 

IAMIAM

This is interesting.
I have recently rate switched (HSBC) and was pleasantly surprised by their desktop valuation.
It is 10k less than what I want it to be when I apply for additional borrowing in three months time. 
Quick question - if it is still 10k out in three months, and I ask for a valuation and the surveyor then values it at less than the desktop, which figure would they use? Can the desktop be more than the physical? Does the surveyor have access to the desktop valuation? 

K_S

IAMIAM said:

This is interesting.
I have recently rate switched (HSBC) and was pleasantly surprised by their desktop valuation.
It is 10k less than what I want it to be when I apply for additional borrowing in three months time. 
Quick question - if it is still 10k out in three months, and I ask for a valuation and the surveyor then values it at less than the desktop, which figure would they use? Can the desktop be more than the physical? Does the surveyor have access to the desktop valuation? 

@iamiam The physical valuation takes precedence and overrides the indexed desktop one.

IAMIAM

Oh really, so it could end up being worse than the indexed desktop one! Surely the surveyor can see that before heading to the house...

Thrugelmir

IAMIAM said:

Oh really, so it could end up being worse than the indexed desktop one! Surely the surveyor can see that before heading to the house...

Surveyor is a third party, not an internal employee of the lender. They'll base their decision on what is actually happening in the local market at the current time. 

MoneyPenguin

You can contest it.

We're in the process of buying a house, and the valuation was 30k lower than what we offered. 
We believed it was incorrect, so we got an estate agent to do a report on local property prices. We submitted that to the bank, who in turn raised it with their valuer.

Few days later they emailed us to say yes ok the property is actually worth what you offered and they promptly send the formal offer.

So don't lose hope, contesting it can make a difference. GL

Folus

MoneyPenguin said:

You can contest it.

We're in the process of buying a house, and the valuation was 30k lower than what we offered. 
We believed it was incorrect, so we got an estate agent to do a report on local property prices. We submitted that to the bank, who in turn raised it with their valuer.

Few days later they emailed us to say yes ok the property is actually worth what you offered and they promptly send the formal offer.

Hi @MoneyPenguin, we're in a similar position to Rjhsteel so this is really positive information since most threads have people saying they've never had any luck challenging the Mortgage provider's valuation.  Can i ask did you have to pay the Estate Agents for their report on local property prices and, if so, roughly what sort of ballpark was that in?