If I take out a new fixed rate deal with my existing provider, will they require a valuation?

Oakeshott

I ask because this seems like a good option if house prices fall (which I doubt they will much—but you never know) and you're close to negative equity. (We took out a 95LTV mortgage last year.) If they don't require a revaluation, seems smart to stick?

simon_or

It will require a revaluation, but it'll be an automated indexed one. To take an example of if your current value is 100k and the house price index goes down by 10%, the value will be calculated as 90k.

Oakeshott

simon_or said:

It will require a revaluation, but it'll be an automated indexed one. To take an example of if your current value is 100k and the house price index goes down by 10%, the value will be calculated as 90k.

Ah. See I thought that didn't happen because the Halifax website states: "There are no legal fees or valuation required" in case of a simple transfer to a new fixed rate product. That led me to think they don't do a valuation for existing customers and assume that the value is what it was 2/3/5 years ago, or whenever you took out the first product.

Although I can understand why they would revalue, especially if there had been big fluctuations in prices. 

Also, I was wondering if they use the original purchase price as the baseline and then either up or downvalue based on the market, or does the valuation work more like Zoopla's system that looks at a wider number of factors? It's just that we purchased for 250k, but with the way the market has been since then Zoopla and others say it's now closer to 290k. I understand the value might go down again, but obviously if they take into account a downturn in the market I would prefer it if they also took into account the earlier upturn. 

K_S

Oakeshott said:

simon_or said:

It will require a revaluation, but it'll be an automated indexed one. To take an example of if your current value is 100k and the house price index goes down by 10%, the value will be calculated as 90k.

Ah. See I thought that didn't happen because the Halifax website states: "There are no legal fees or valuation required" in case of a simple transfer to a new fixed rate product. That led me to think they don't do a valuation for existing customers and assume that the value is what it was 2/3/5 years ago, or whenever you took out the first product.

Although I can understand why they would revalue, especially if there had been big fluctuations in prices. 

@oakeshott Halifax update the property value periodically using the process outlined below. If you login to your online Halifax mortgage account you should be able to see what the current value/LTV is as per Halifax and that's what would be used if you applied to do a product switch (PT) today.