In the process of buying a new house. It was on the market at £400k (reasonable for size etc in area).

Offer of £378 accepted. Mortgage co. instruct survey for purposes of mortgage valuation and it comes back at £350!

We have asked what criteria the surveyor used to come to that conclusion. Surveyors won’t speak to us as mortgage company instructed them. Mortgage company saying it’s none of our business but we can provide evidence of houses that are ‘similar’ that have sold for more in the last 3 months.

So we have looked at the land registry and only 12 houses have sold in the area in the last 12 months! (Quite rural). Also none of them are really comparable.

We have been looking for the last year and this is the first house we have liked in a price bracket from 300-500.

Do we just have to walk away? Try a different mortgage company? Pay for our own survey (although mortgage company have said it’s a waste of time)

Is this just the Brexit effect, and lenders gettting very twitchy ?

why did you not get a valuation prior to submitting an offer?

Find £28K, go back to seller and inform them of valuation or walk away

Ignore it; a mortgage valuation bears little relation to the price you agree.

Use the valuation to get the price lowered! Take it to the sellers or the sellers agents and say this is what the house has been valued at by a qualified expereinced surveyor, we expect the price to be lowered accordingly. See what they say.. if they say no or don;t give any away I’d seriously consider walking away,,, as the house is over priced.

Ignore it: a mortgage valuation bears little relation to the price you agree.;

It has some relevance to paying it though.

Hard to shift a lender once that comes in. You can ask them to have a proper look inside if they’ve done the standard ‘drive by’ valuation. I’d be surprised if it gets it much closer though.

I’m guessing this is your existing lender. The only other option is to try another lender, but of course that may not be as favourable in terms of rate. And they may even use the same surveyor.

Are you sure that the house is not overpriced, even at 378?

EDIT: Is the ‘loan to value’ high enough to make this a problem? If not, then crack on if you’re confident it’s a good price.

Interestingly my wife, who is an estate agent. Had a valuation survivor call he for price guidance a week or so ago. (She gets lots of calls for local area price guidance) the new house she was asked for guidance by the survivors for was, in her view way, way over priced! In fact the builder had been really struggling to shift them. She provided comparables both new and used. In my and her view it’s worth either reordering or walking.

House valuations are very subjective.

A house is worth what some will pay for it.

I had a relocation package at work and the house was valued by 3 different surveyors and there was a spread of values, about 15% difference between top and bottom.

We had the same while selling last year, have heard from several reliable sources it’s become a much more common thing, citing austerity, brexshit and warning signs of London prices stagnating. We had 6 offers over asking price with a week but the surveyor tried to down-value the house by £16k, the only hole he could pick in it was that it might be on a site of radon gas, then again it might not. They asked if we could come down in price and we said we’d knock a few k of but not 16k, they came back a few days later to say they’d found the cash but we’d already decided to go down a different route.

Revise your offer to 360 or walk.

I disagree, if you like the house and you can raise additional funds go for it, try to use this to leverage a few quid off the price.

A lot of valuations are just drive by aka a load of rubbish. If it’s particularly nicely done out you may want to get something done yourself but not sure it would help with the same lender.

Will make a big enough difference to your LTV? If not, don’t worry about it.

Thanks for comments. I’ve become emotionally attached to the house so don’t want to see it go.

It’s a big bespoke house finished to a high standard, maybe the fact it’s only 3 bed made the surveyor look at other 3 bed houses. In a normal house it would be a 5 bed.

Yes it will effect LTV, knocking us from 75 to 81%.

What we are perplexed about it. Every other house currently on the market in the area must be 50-100k over valued!

We will try the your over priced, and put more cash in ourselves to meet part way.

In a normal house it would be a 5 bed.

For something reason in the UK, we are obsessed by the number of bedrooms rather than the actual size of the house.

The number of bedrooms is the standard way in which houses are valued.

IMO, if you like it and can afford it go for it, if you can get a few quid of the price as well, good luck.

Other mortgage lenders are available, its a competitive market, go elsewhere.

My sister had this problem when buying a few months ago. Changed lender in the end as they valued it at the agreed purchase price. I wouldn’t hold any value in the valuation other than the annoyance for LTV purposes. Similarly if I was selling and had already agreed to drop from £400-£378k I probably wouldn’t countenance dropping further. Unless £400k was way off…

i’ve had it trying to remortgage mine, we were the only people on the street to buy bar 1 house in 15yrs.

got it resolved by a different lender, Im convinced they just Zoopla’d the post code!

I’m selling a house at the moment, as executor of a relative’s estate. The agent suggested asking £ 280k but we didn’t have a sniff of interest at that and I have accepted an offer of £ 245k. So the market value looks to be 12.5% lower than the asking price. Settling at £ 350k against an asking price of £ 400k is exactly the same % reduction.

I remember buying my first flat. The mortgage co’s surveyor called me to ask what I needed it to be valued it as he wasn’t sure.
Anyway, another good reason for moving to Scotlandshire – Home Information Packs include a valuation and have to be provided before the property can be advertised.

We used this situation and renegotiated. The seller is likely to have a similar problem if it goes back on the market, but if it’s your dream home don’t lose it over a few £’000

The house we’re living in now had this problem a few years ago.

It had been sold stc for the full asking price of 175k, but had only been valued at 155k by the mortgage company which ended up falling through, it was 8 years ago in the depths of the housing drop.

We came along in November, liked the house but weren’t happy with the previous owner, who had ripped all the central heating out and offered 145k, told the estate agent that if he wanted some commission for Christmas to help it along and we ended up paying 146k.

I’d be going back and talking to the estate agent and see what he can do to mediate between you both.

We had the same while selling last year, have heard from several reliable sources it’s become a much more common thing, citing austerity, brexshit

Same thing for us selling earlier this year – he had three offers for asking price so the estate agents went back for best and final offers. We ended up accepting an offer for £5k over the asking price. Happy days until Countrywide Mortgages were appointed to value our house and down valued it by £10k. Something that was supposedly increasingly common.

To be honest, I have little faith in what they did – their report flagged out house as a flood risk. It was close to a canal and a river which often flooded the village but the house was significantly higher. The post code carried flood risk but they were incapable of engaging brain to realise that our house was a lot higher than then water ad that was despite driving down the hill and over the bridges…

A bit of googling and the likes of Countrywide do seem notorious for down valuing houses.

Countrywide are awful. Drive by valuation – supporting photo was of our 20 ft beech hedge, you couldn’t even see the house! They called it a mid terrace – nope! It was a terrace of 3 29 years ago, 2 were converted into 1 property – Ours.

When we kicked back, Mortgage provider said if we wanted to challenge it, we had to pay for a full valuation – £500 paid direct to …….Countrywide again! No impartial surveyor allowed.

Had a similar annoying experience with Countrywide.

Planned an extension, got three local agents to value our current layout and with the work complete before going ahead. All fairly favourable and similar sales prices on our street, so got in touch with the lender (Barclays) to arrange a mortgage extension.

Countrywide arrive to do the survey. 5 minutes in the house (at least he came into the house!), didn’t see every room, came back 12% under (on a ~450k house). Didn’t want to mess with the LTV so limited what we could borrow. Barclays would’ve accepted a full survey (at our cost obvs), and would have delayed things by a month or more. We’re building a smaller extension (which tbf isn’t such a bad thing).

I suspect a lot of this will be a deliberate policy by the surveyors to limit their exposure in the event Bre**t causes another housing market collapse. Last time they came under fire for excessively generous valuations which allowed riskier lending.

So roll on 1 month later, lots of additional money and peoples time wasted, First Direct mortgaged lender ditched and new lender survey completed, no problems with valuation. Solicitors now rushing at to speed to complete (no sarcasm honest)

We have had a number of people approaching us in the area saying we have got a bargain and it should have been on the market for more.

Bloody ridiculous farce

Great result FD. What a waste of time and effort though. My sister had the same problem last year, new lender happy with price, first lender valued it really low.