Do valuers just agree with Remortgage Lenders Figure vs Open Market

ReadySteadyPop

shinytop said:

ReadySteadyPop said:

silvercar said:

IAMIAM said:

I bought a 2 bed semi in 2017, nice area, and every time I have remortgaged/switched rate I have always put in a figure that is always slightly higher than the screen which has triggered a physical valuation.

Every time, the valuer has just agreed. I ask, because I know full well if i put it onto the open market, I would get 30-40k less (based on local area) than what I keep valuing it at when rate switching....

Lender always HSBC/First Direct/Nationwide and always used Countrywide or L&G

Why are you doing this? To get a lower LTV and therefore a lower mortgage rate? If that 30-40k is a relatively high percentage of the sale price, I think you risk bordering on fraud - obtaining a mortgage by deception. You are attempting to obtain a better mortgage deal by falsely inflating your property value. If your property is worth £1m then £40k is just 4% and small change, if your property is worth £200k then 40k is 20% and significant. If this was discovered your mortgage could be called in and a fraud marker put against your name.

Any worse than stats from mortgage debt lenders that use asking prices to pretend that the market is better than it actually is?

Do they?  I always thought they (at least Halifax and Nationwide) used mortgage valuations, which would presumably be based on the selling price.  Do you have any links to major indices that use asking prices? 

Unless the data comes from the "Registration of Sale" it is still just an estimate of final sale price as many approvals do not complete.

shinytop

ReadySteadyPop said:

shinytop said:

ReadySteadyPop said:

silvercar said:

IAMIAM said:

I bought a 2 bed semi in 2017, nice area, and every time I have remortgaged/switched rate I have always put in a figure that is always slightly higher than the screen which has triggered a physical valuation.

Every time, the valuer has just agreed. I ask, because I know full well if i put it onto the open market, I would get 30-40k less (based on local area) than what I keep valuing it at when rate switching....

Lender always HSBC/First Direct/Nationwide and always used Countrywide or L&G

Why are you doing this? To get a lower LTV and therefore a lower mortgage rate? If that 30-40k is a relatively high percentage of the sale price, I think you risk bordering on fraud - obtaining a mortgage by deception. You are attempting to obtain a better mortgage deal by falsely inflating your property value. If your property is worth £1m then £40k is just 4% and small change, if your property is worth £200k then 40k is 20% and significant. If this was discovered your mortgage could be called in and a fraud marker put against your name.

Any worse than stats from mortgage debt lenders that use asking prices to pretend that the market is better than it actually is?

Do they?  I always thought they (at least Halifax and Nationwide) used mortgage valuations, which would presumably be based on the selling price.  Do you have any links to major indices that use asking prices? 

Unless the data comes from the "Registration of Sale" it is still just an estimate of final sale price as many approvals do not complete.

Yes but it will be a realistic estimate as it's the lenders who are taking the risk (I seem to recall your making that point more than once).  But anyway, they don't use asking prices; I think you must have just made that up ... 

silvercar

lfc321 said:

silvercar said:

IAMIAM said:

I bought a 2 bed semi in 2017, nice area, and every time I have remortgaged/switched rate I have always put in a figure that is always slightly higher than the screen which has triggered a physical valuation.

Every time, the valuer has just agreed. I ask, because I know full well if i put it onto the open market, I would get 30-40k less (based on local area) than what I keep valuing it at when rate switching....

Lender always HSBC/First Direct/Nationwide and always used Countrywide or L&G

Why are you doing this? To get a lower LTV and therefore a lower mortgage rate? If that 30-40k is a relatively high percentage of the sale price, I think you risk bordering on fraud - obtaining a mortgage by deception. You are attempting to obtain a better mortgage deal by falsely inflating your property value. If your property is worth £1m then £40k is just 4% and small change, if your property is worth £200k then 40k is 20% and significant. If this was discovered your mortgage could be called in and a fraud marker put against your name.

I don’t see how this could be considered fraud: OP is claiming a higher value than suggested by the lender’s database. In response, the lender commissions a valuation. If the valuer agrees with OP about the value and advises the lender accordingly, where is the fraud?

It certainly wouldn’t be worth doing this every time you change mortgage deal, as the OP seems to do. But in the case where it makes the difference between one LTV band and another, it could be worthwhile. 

If the LTV is low, lenders don’t always commission a valuation. If you over value to get a lower LTV which in turn means a mortgage rate of say 0.3% lower, then that is the deception. You know full well an accurate valuation would lead to a higher mortgage rate.

Elliott.T123

silvercar said:

If the LTV is low, lenders don’t always commission a valuation. If you over value to get a lower LTV which in turn means a mortgage rate of say 0.3% lower, then that is the deception. You know full well an accurate valuation would lead to a higher mortgage rate.

I would say in theory you have a point however (short of using this thread as proof) there is no way that would ever make it as far as court. How would they prove that someone has deliberately and intestinally misvalued their property to gain a better rate rather than just put down a high valuation that they genuinely believe the property is worth.

For example I honestly hand on heart do not know if my property is worth £650k or £750k, I could hand on heart put down £750k and say I thought it was worth that. If a surveyor were to value it at £650k how could anyone prove one way or another that it was fraud rather than me being emotionally invested in the property and therefore genuinely believing the value is higher than a professional sees it.

lfc321

silvercar said:

If the LTV is low, lenders don’t always commission a valuation. If you over value to get a lower LTV which in turn means a mortgage rate of say 0.3% lower, then that is the deception. You know full well an accurate valuation would lead to a higher mortgage rate.

The OP explicitly said in their first post that entering a higher value had triggered a physical valuation by the lender. It's just daft to suggest that there is anything remotely close to fraud here. The OP might reasonably be accused of 'trying it on', or even of wasting their time, but not fraud.