This, I had a similar issues selling a house because it was a new build close to an area of much older cheaper houses so our 600K houses were compared to 250K houses and deemed over valued. yet, there were buyers willing to meet asking price. We accepted the highest offer but that fell through because they had a minimal deposit and the bank valued property lower. In the end had to accept a lower offer so someone with a much better deposit could get mortgage approved.
House Valuation Issue
- Thread starter Dis86
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This, I had a similar issues selling a house because it was a new build close to an area of much older cheaper houses so our 600K houses were compared to 250K houses and deemed over valued. yet, there were buyers willing to meet asking price. We accepted the highest offer but that fell through because they had a minimal deposit and the bank valued property lower. In the end had to accept a lower offer so someone with a much better deposit could get mortgage approved.
Not really true, estage agents price at a reasonable value to get a fast sell. Much mroe important to them to shfit the property quickly than get a tiny bit more on the sale price.
Even if you knew there is nothing you could do to change it. At the end of the day a fw variables are thrown in a computer such as size, # bedrooms, location, garden, age and a value is spat out. The bank has very little incentive to disagree with the valuation.
I'm just curious if they've made a mistake with some of those variables though. For example one of the conditions of the sale was that we buy the freehold for the building - which has been processed but probably won't show up on official records yet. I'm also curious what properties they're comparing us against for valuations as like you we have some cheaper houses located nearby but which are built to a completely different standard and located on the 'other side of the tracks' literally.
Soldato
Ah see this is why I posted about free/lease as an potential issue earlier
Is it now freehold, that is a valid one to throw back to the mortgage lender if its not updated fully yet they may well get leasehold coming back as the ownership.
Precisely. Which is why I'm really irritated at their response of 'we don't have to justify it to you'. Well sorry, but when you're being paid to do a job the client has a right to review your process!
Soldato
They are hard work.
When i was last buying I had to cancel my appointed solicitor, they were not responding to anything. i found out later that they were having IT systems issues AND staffing issues, but were still taking on new work despite this.
So I discussed with the estate agent and she set me up with another solicitor, who she knew had been excellent historically, but somewhat distant from me (she was right, this solicitor was indeed excellent)
Anyway the moment i contacted the mortgage lender to advise of a solicitor change they rescinded my offer. I was like WTF, they replied with system say this must happen. Its simple though jus get your old solicitor to confirm to us why you left them, I said but thats the issue on why I changed they wont respond to anything in a timely manner so them bothering to reply to why they have been ditched is pretty darn unlikely. The operator didnt get it and said is there anything else you need!
I was spitting feathers but hung up. I called up the following day to my dedicated handler (was a trial they were running) went through it all and managed to get her to try to speak to the solicitor, she came back with they are not answering their phones, I will just say they confirmed verbally. I was lucky I was on that trial, they were assigning experienced highstreet staff to some customers in addition to using the call centre, without her I have no idea if i would have managed to salvage that mortgage and may have had to go elsewhere.
Apparently its a red flag changing solicitor mid way through a purchase as they think you may be trying to cover something up and hoping a new solicitor wont notice.
Soldato
In reply to both of these, it isnt the mortgage lender as such that is setting these valuation figures. As I said earlier, the mortgage lender/bank whatever you want to call it, has little to no control whatever on the property valuations, which are done, by a complete third party to the lender.
If the case where one lender valued the property higher than another, that will simply be a case of getting lucky with the individual valuer.
Mortgage lenders will panel all valuations out to thrird parties, even as some now do what are called AVM's (automated valuation models) these are based on databases again, the lender has no control over.
It isn't the lender being cuatious, lender wants to lend, believe me. But if the valuer says property is worth X, then it is what it is.
Soldato
In "my" case it was a member from the building society, I remember my father did manage to speak to someone higher up who confirmed what the issue was but they wouldn't budge. This was about 30 years ago.
But now i agree, I would prefer to pay my own surveyor so i could pick based on what i wanted. However most lenders if not all require someone approved by them and as such even if you get our own you will need to pay them for the basic service.
Its part of the reason the industry were against the sellers packs, they wouldn't trust them, and as such were saying they would still insist the borrower paid for one of their approved surveys/valuations.
Yeah there's been no choice from these guys. You have to use their appointed surveyor. I do wonder though if it's been the same guy each time as it's been different people from our end in the house each time.
Update to this - looks like the surveyors had all made the same error! Didn't include the fact that the property is freehold - not leasehold. Incompetence from their side.
Soldato
I had to get 2 surveys done on my house in pretty quick succession due to changing lender. Both lenders used the same survey company, so they came out to the same property twice in 2 months. Wouldn't surprise me if they are just using the same people each time.
So, has this corrected the agreed valuation of the sale?
Yeah. It's now overvalued as it happens!
Soldato
To be fair, it doesn't really sound like incompetence, its more like bad timing. Most of these surveys are done remotely so are reliant on the records available to them. If the land registry record said leasehold at the time of the valuation then it'll have been valued as such.
Surveyor can only go with the info they are given - the fact they both made the same assumption suggests they had been given the wrong info.
If they'd been willing to discuss the matter though it could have been resolved instantly. Instead they refused to engage with the client which to me is a combination of arrogance and incompetence.
@fastwunz
They didn't use all of the information available to them.
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Sounds like a better surveyor than these ones were!
Yeah. He asked me quite a few questions regarding the house. Think you got cowboys. Lol.