[Closed] Home Valuation Report… should I be worried?

Do they even get out of the car now?

If it's the basic valuation then don't be surprised if you don't even receive a knock on the door.

Having said that, I sense these days that some lenders are more keen to get someone inside the premises and see how/where they can devalue the property, eg picking out faults that aren't there. Had this happen on a purchase last year. Was a complete load of BS. Didn't proceed with the purchase but that was because the vendor was a complete ****.

Really? Wow.

Apparently - says the email - we can expect 'up to 30 minutes' of investigations. I guess this will be from the street then. 😀

Do they even get out of the car now?

Homebuyers survey.. About an hour.
They don't disturb the fabric of the building or indeed move anything.
They will look in the loft but not go in. They asses what they can see but nothing else
They will also speculate on issues given the age of the building. For example my survey on my purchase said the wall ties MAY be corroded because of the age, this MAY lead to structural problems.
Well Aliens MAY land in the garden and mess up the flower beds....
It's now done on a traffic light system. Green is no bother, Amber is possible attention, red is immediate attention.
Gas and elec will be a red as the surveyer isn't qualified to assess these.
There will be a lot of "possible" "might be"
It is a total arse covering exercise. You don't see a copy as the seller. If there is a show stopper they may use it to knock down the price a bit more.
My roof was (is) knackered and I was prepared for some haggling when the report came in.
Be brave. If the buyers get really silly, bin them. If they are smart they'll read between the lines as well. If it was a bidding war there is another buyer out there!
Remember this is only done for the benefit of the mortgage company.

Edit
You said valuation survey... They'll have a quick walk round and that's it.. Mortgage company just want to know they aren't going to loose out!

Fantastic info there, MartynS! Thanks.

The fella who's coming round will be doing a 'valuation report' though. That's different from a homebuyer's survey?

Valuation report is about £200 cheaper than a home buyers.. Draw your own conclusions..
Valuation is the bare minimum that has to be done for the mortgage company.
I'd take that as your buyers really want it and don't want to mess about...

Fantastic! Cheers. 🙂

Last valuation report I had was for a remortgage, and the surveyors only question was what value did I need it to be to get the mortgage.

Just wondering if the buyer will/could use this report to try to leverage a discount (having offered above asking price initially following a bidding war)

If they have bid over what the mortgage company deem the value to be it will impact their loan to value % which will impact what they can borrow (anything over the value will reduce their deposit)

I had this on my last sale. There was some slightly stressful haggling.

😕

They don't disturb the fabric of the building or indeed move anything.

Ours did.

He knocked a bloody table lamp over and broke it! He was mortified. It was only a cheap one from IKEA and I joked that if he gave our house a clean bill of health then I wouldn't charge him.

He did. 😀

Previously we had a Homebuyers and it told us lots of useless stuff about the kitchen being dated, plus a long list of experts we should get in to check stuff. And he missed a load of major faults that cost me cash to fix.

Latest place we just had a valuation, got very little info back from memory.

Valuation survey came up with the precise figure I'd told the bank. It's almost as if they did it deliberately ...

DrJ - Member

Valuation survey came up with the precise figure I'd told the bank. It's almost as if they did it deliberately ...

Our last 3 valuation surveys magically valued it at exactly the purchase price we'd agreed too. Remarkable.

We just had ours done for some additional borrowing. The power of one mans opinion, which he forms on the basis of 15 mins measuring and a cursory glance and what other property is for sale for (which is what it essentially boils down to) is very concerning.

Fine if you live on a street of identikit houses that are frequently up for sale but if not he has basically just taken a stab in the dark.

Ours did.

He knocked a bloody table lamp over and broke it! He was mortified. It was only a cheap one from IKEA and I joked that if he gave our house a clean bill of health then I wouldn't charge him.

He did.

OP, fill your house with lots of precariously positioned Ikea lights, put a few outside just to be sure.

Didn't need the Ikea lights - the guy came at 9:52 and was out the door at 9:56. Yes, I timed him. 😉

Took five photos, ran around with a damp meter, asked us if we had a damp problem (we said no) and buggered off.

If that's worth £200 to £250 I'm retraining as a surveyor.

😯

You did well, most valuation surveys are done using the power of Google StreetView.

Unless our guy is actually this guy...

[img] [/img]

…he can't possibly have made a judgement on our house. That was just too damn quick.

StreetView would have saved him a trip.

* Researches house surveyor training *

Our mortgage company offered us 3 options. The most expensive was a full valuation, then a drive by or finally an extra 10% on what we paid as we'd been there 5 years. Its easily gone up more than 10% but that was all we needed to push us into the next LTV bracket so we went with that. Free and instant.

I still have the 46 page document listing 23,000 possible faults my house may have before I bought it. They were right on about 6 points and wrong on the most important one. The massive rising damp problem he red flagged was right next to a leaking shower tray. I can only assume his guide dog failed to alert him to this.