Estate agent valuation or surveyor

magicmcone

Hi there,

We purchased a run down flat and have redone during the past year or so. We do not plan to sell it, but would like to have an “as accurate as possible” up to date valuation, mostly to plan our finances accordingly for when the next remortgage comes in about two years time.

We do understand that prices can and probably will change by then, and that is part of the exercise, to try to plan ahead for best and worst case scenarios.
Would you rely on having a couple of local estate agents to value the property or get a surveyor that is used by lenders  to have a more accurate valuation. In this case, any idea of which firms are more widely used by lenders to do this?

Many thanks all in advance 

Ruben

user1977

magicmcone said:

We do understand that prices can and probably will change by then, and that is part of the exercise, to try to plan ahead for best and worst case scenarios.

Not sure what you mean - valuations can only be current, or retrospective. A valuation now isn't going to give you a best/worst case scenario for 18 months in the future.

But in any event, a surveyor is actually qualified to give valuations, whereas estate agents aren't (and have the potential bias of angling for business by giving you an attractive valuation).

donutandbeer

Unless you need it to be really precise, I feel like you can’t get it too wrong by just doing some research on Rightmove (both current listings and recently sold). 

NameUnavailable

If you can't figure it out yourself (maybe nothing similar has been marketed/sold recently) then get 3 EA's to give you valuations (don't say you're not selling, just say something like you're considering a job in another part of the country). Ask for a valuation to get a quick sale which should be what they think they'd actually sell it for today.

Surveyors are just giving an opinion same as the EA. When I worked in the business we'd often get surveyors in the office asking for our advice on the value of a property they'd just looked at!

magicmcone

user1977 said:

magicmcone said:

We do understand that prices can and probably will change by then, and that is part of the exercise, to try to plan ahead for best and worst case scenarios.

Not sure what you mean - valuations can only be current, or retrospective. A valuation now isn't going to give you a best/worst case scenario for 18 months in the future.

But in any event, a surveyor is actually qualified to give valuations, whereas estate agents aren't (and have the potential bias of angling for business by giving you an attractive valuation).

Sorry if I didn’t explain myself properly, I meant to get an up to date valuation to have an starting point and try to work out by ourselves our situation for different future scenarios.
Thanks for the advice. Any surveyor firm that is recommended or that lenders use to make their valuations? This would be in London zone 2, if that is of any help.

Many thanks again

kingstreet

Lenders typically use Esurv, Connells and Countrywide if you want to go that route.

newsgroupmonkey_

kingstreet said:

Lenders typically use Esurv, Connells and Countrywide if you want to go that route.

And a local independent surveyor will be considerably cheaper.

sidneyvic

You could either waste your money on a surveyor or waste an estate agents time.
The valuation now is totally irrelevant to how much it will devalue over the next two years... Just hope you have plenty of equity and don't end up in negative equity.

TheJP

What's the point, it will be different in 2 years time.

Zerforax

You will have to pay a surveyor. Estate agent will do it for free (but will call you every 6 months about selling your home).

It's not an exact science in any case.

magicmcone

TheJP said:

What's the point, it will be different in 2 years time.

Thanks for the constructive input. As stated, the idea is to have an up to date valuation in order to consider different (more/less favourable) future scenarios and plan our finances ahead accordingly. We are thankfully in a position to overpay some mortgage. Deciding to do so or use that money differently would be based on  our LTV in 2 years time should house prices drop 10%. If applying a 10% drop to the up to date value we would still have 80% equity or more, we probably opt to use the money differently. If that is not the case, we will probably choose to overpay.

Hope that helps