Estate agent/surveyor argument?! Help!

[Doodledumdums]

We're buying a really beautiful house, literally our dream home. Our offer was accepted in December, our house is sold (living with parents temporarily until new house goes through), mortgage offer was in place, but last week we had a bit of a bombshell dropped on us. Basically, the surveyor has valued the property at £65,000 less than we have agreed to pay for it, and therefore our mortgage offer has been lowered in line with the surveyors valuation. The surveyor is absolutely wrong! Comparable properties in the area are around the same price that we agreed to pay, the estate agent valued it at that, another surveyor has valued it at that, but the surveyor that the mortgage company sent disagrees.

Where do we go from here? Has anyone experienced this before? The vendors will not drop the price, they already dropped it once before. What can we do to get the mortgage company to reconsider? Apparently their surveyor was only at the property for 15 mins and didn't even go in all of the rooms?! The vendor has another family who want the house, so we really don't have any time to lose!

Help!

[Mar2010]

I've not been in this situation but I've read a few threadson here where ppeople have argued the valuation and sent through supporting evidence to the mortgage company and I think some have been successful. Try searching the archives on this thread to see what you find. Good luck!

[Theironfistofarkus]

Ask the mortgage company what their appeals process is. We appealed and persuaded the surveyor to increase though only slightly. We had to produce evidence of 3 comparable properties that had sold recently nearby. They had to be actually completed prices and not asking or exchange or under offer price. Other option is to apply for another mortgage which is what we eventually had to do. Unfortunately we got the same surveyor again but had better ltv so didn't matter.

[Barbeasty]

Also check their report and that there aren't any mistakes on it. The surveyor when we remortgaged managed to get the number of rooms wrong, so was theoretically comparing the value with totally different houses.

Our advisor said an appeal is rare, but can work. If you can find the 3 houses which have sold (recently) for the higher price it may work.

And if there's a delay while you have to apply for a different mortgage or something, make sure you're pointing out that the other potential buyers will come up against the same problem and it at not be sorted any quicker. They would have to start the whole process from scratch, and may still come up against a problem valuation.

[Doodledumdums]

Sorry to hear that everlong It's a horrible situation to be in.

If it wasn't such a large discrepancy then I'd have a bit more confidence that it will get resolved, but 65k is an awful lot, so I doubt that the surveyor is going to admit that he is wrong by that much. Maybe I'm wrong though. Definitely worth appealing in any case. I reeeeeally don't want to lose the house! Plus because we've already sold our current house, we were hoping to be able to move out of my parents house soon...though I guess that was our fault.

[Doodledumdums]

It was an independant surveyor who we found.

[Crutchlow35]

Ask the surveyor for his comparisons and how he got to that figure. Appeal to the bamk.

[LtEveDallas]

The banks surveyor is generally shit. Ours put the house we are buying down as a 4 bed - it's a 3 bed. It put the whole process back by at least two weeks and took me half an hour on the phone actually arguing with him to admit the reason that he was adamant it was a 4 bed...

The seller has bought a new bed for her new place and is storing it in her unused dining room.

To him, that meant the house was a 4 bed.

Fucking arse. He wouldn't back down until I asked him if he would still have considered it a 4 bed if she'd stored it in the living room.

I'd go back to the bank and go through the appeals process with your own survey as 'proof'. It really gets my goat that we HAVE to have a banks surveyor and they employ cowboys who charge twice as much for half the service.

[Doodledumdums]

We lost the house I am so gutted! Basically the vendors didn't want to wait for us to get the issue sorted, so they went back to the other family who wanted it, and we've been asked to send our contracts back

I am so cross at the stupid surveyor How could he get the valuation so wrong? I rang today but he refused to speak to me about it and said that I had to create a case to prove that the house is worth what we agreed to pay. I don't understand why it isn't his job to prove that the house is worth what he valued it at, afterall, he's the one we paid!

Anyway, it's pretty futile now, the house is no longer ours.

[thecheekofhim]

[systemsmalfunction]

What a shame!!! I think if you had had a bit more time you could have applied with a different mortgage company

[Doodledumdums]

Thanks for the

Well I guess it depends which surveyor they use, in a way I hope they do have the same issues, but that is probably just me being spiteful because I don't want anyone else to have MY house. I am cross that the vendors wouldn't wait for us to sort it, they initially told us they weren't in a rush, took 6 weeks to instruct their solicitor in the first place, and this is hardly our bloody fault!! We just needed a bit of time to sort it! Grrrrr

[AdiposeLoveMe]

This happened to us. We had our mortgage in principal and the bank sent around their surveyor and valued it less that the price we agreed. We did appeal it but they would not/ could not give us any update for weeks and weeks. He did let slip though there was nothing similar that had sold in the street and we found out that the comparison the surveyor had used was a cash only sale about a mile away suffering from subsidence (sp?!)
It was a private sale but the seller was about to put it on the open market because it was taking so long.
They took that the surveyor was right and lowered their price by £10k for us but we still couldn't raise the difference.
In the mean time we went elsewhere for a mortgage and it was surveyed no problem for the original asking price.

None of this helps you, sorry.
I just wanted to tell you our experience.

And I know it's not helpful but maybe it wasn't meant to be and you will find another home that is much better.

[mistlethrush]

Easy on the valuation issue - ask the people that have now got the house how much they have bought the house - get this in writing from them (explain you have a case against the surveyor) and you have your proof - I would think that they've offered similar to you and if they've bought the house at that, its worth that (if there are two people willing to pay that it proves it very well I would think)