What does a home valuer look at?

[getoutof]

So we have a valuation next week regarding our remortgage, what will they look at? Will it matter what the house looks like? Decor and general housekeeping? Our garden is currently a bit over grown? Help me please

Bump?

We had a RICS survey so we could pay back our HTB loan and remortgage. They basically just looked at whether the house had any structural changes (the house is only 5 years old), how many bedrooms etc. Wanted to know whether we had a garage or parking spaces, utility room. Took a photo of the front of the house and the garden (terribly overgrown-think I'd missed a rogue dog poo as well 🤦🏻‍♀️) wasn't here long enough to appreciate decor and was gone in about 15 mins. We then had the lender's surveyor come out and they valued the house at exactly the same. Which is weird as our house was valued by the both at 315k but the exact same style of house with the same amount of parking etc is going for 390k on the open market. I'm glad though because otherwise if they'd valued differently that would've created a world of pain.

They look at three main things:
What similar houses (size, age, location) recently sold for, adjusted for market changes
Cost to fix obvious issues (infestation, damp, leaking gutters, knackered boiler, v old electrics, rotting windows, subsidence, all that sort of stuff).
Decor wise they generally classify as either poor (ie needs everything done), fair (ie what most people live in for that house type) or good (newly done, nothing too outrageous, spec is in line with house type or better - eg laminate fine in a 2-bed terrace, not in a 20 bed McMansion).

If the garden resembles the brambles around Rapunzels tower and the house is floor-to-ceiling hoarders then that’d knock the value, but typical busy life mess shouldn’t matter.