Let to buy valuation

[AliceWChild]

Can anyone tell me what a let to buy valuer is looking for? We're letting out our house to buy a new one, desperate for it to go to plan. Will they look beyond clutter and dirty washing? Will they be ok about the odd bit of work that needs doing eg a window we're getting replaced? Can I distract them with my very cute baby?

[Curioustiger]

I can't tell you what they're looking for but when last in this position I:
-arranged furniture to hide a missing bit of carpet
-went onto zoopla and suggested my property was worth more than their standard valuation because it had had extensive refurbishment (my estimate of its new value was accepted and is now available for anyone to check)

• got a list of comparables for rent and sale and dropped them into the conversation with the valuer as I made him an outstandingly nice cup of tea! Plus a lot of flattering chat about how interesting his job must be, how he must know the area like the back of his hand etc etc
  

Who knows if it made any difference... At least I felt as if I'd done all I could!

[Goodwordguide]

We had a massive tidy up and clean and I also had a loooong chat with the surveyor about other properties in the area that had gone for more than ours, what work we'd done, what a fab house it was etc etc. Don't know if it made a difference but he valued it for what we asked.

[AliceWChild]

Thanks that's useful. Hadn't thought of zoopla and just looking calmed me a little as they are all valued for sale and rental as more than we said. We erred on side of caution. Flattery and tea sounds way to go.

[jammybean]

We had this done on our london flat about 12 months ago. It was pretty straight forward, we had 3 EA come to value it as if we were going to put it on the market. The bank sent a guy to value our flat, spent about 15 minutes doing his thing, taking notes, our place is a tip, toys all over the place, clean washing everywhere . It was valued higher than we expected, we released a chunk of equity as a deposit for our new place. I can't remember exactly how long the entire process took, but within 6 weeks we had 130k in our acc.

Its nerve wracking but you'll be fine.