To think surveyors are the most useless bunch of twunts ever fairly closely followed by my dh?

[lecce]

I already have a thread with all the details on property, but, basically, we have -for the second time- been the victim of a ridiculously over-cautious survey on our house. At the very least it has cost us £10 000 but it could be more, or the whole sale could still fall through because of it.

We have lived here 8 years. The house has lived here 107 years. It is not about to fall down. We have looked after it pretty well, it is not a money pit, it is/was well-priced for the area, we have two small children and they live here happily and healthily - not in damp conditions and, no, no wasps buzzing around from the nest in the loft .

The woman who is/was buying it loved it. It was perfect for her. Now she may not have it . Oh, but she is a bitch too - despite the fact that we have already agreed to a £10 000 discount she has still left us hanging all weekend instead of coming back and telling us whether that is good enough or not .

And every time I start, admittedly ranting, about fucking surveyors/buyers etc, dh snaps, "Oh can't you just be positive/constructive?" No I fucking can't, I am anagry and sad and it is their fault .

Lecce - YABU. The one from her mortgage company has said the property is only worth the new, lower, price. Why??

because that is all its worth!!!

and you bought in a sellers market and are selling in a buyers market. buyers are going to be demanding. you need to get the best deal you can on your new house & assuming you trading up you should come out of it well.

focus your energies on getting this sale through & getting the best deal for your new home.

YoYoYo, you are wrong.

A mortgage valuation is used to confirm the property is worth what you are paying for it and will pick up any works required that, if not addressed, will have a detrimental affect on the lenders security i.e. damp/electricals etc

It is not in the remit of a mortgage valuation to value above or beyond the asking price.

If an actual valuation is required a more indepth report would need to be carried out.

but a house is worth what someone will pay for it.

I had a house up for sale, the agent thought it was worth 100, I hoped for more and asked him to advertise OIRO 100.

We had potential buyers offering 90, 100, 110, 125 and 130.

Whoever we'd sold it to, the house would have been "worth" that.

Prior to the sale, who knows what a lender's valuer would have (guessed) it was "worth?"

I feel your pain, i was also shitted on by an over cautious survey. Fortunately common sense reigned over it, but still very frustrating.

kazza A mortgage valuation is used to confirm the property is worth what you are paying for it

it is only there to protect the lender i.e. is the house worth the mortgage they are lending on it. It is not there for the benefit of the buyer or seller.

If an actual valuation is required a more in-depth report would need to be carried out. as piglet john says, there isn?t a 'real value' of a property they can be assessed. It is worth what someone is prepared to pay. If the buyer wants an in depth survey, they can pay for one and this will answer more of the queries the basic one raised.

actually the house is over 100 years old so she should be paying for an full structural survey. i dont gather that she has from this thread.

OP, you need to step away from she is a bitch too....it is their fault . you are going to need to compromise with her to some extent, or find another buyer.

if your property is a good price, someone else will want it. if people arent queuing up, you need to work with the buyer that you have.

how you make the current housing market work for you is haggle hard on your next property. its is a buyers market. you lose when you are the seller and win when you are the buyer.

A house is worth what someone will pay for it
Yes, but most people have to borrow to buy a house. If the lender doesn't agree it is worth that much, it is irrelevant that the would-be buyer and seller do.

yoYo I have compromised - We have reduced the price by £10 000 without actually knowing the full details, having had any quotations etc. I probably shouldn't have called her a bitch (was angry and wine had been had) but I feel that as we immediately agreed to a sizeable reduction (the amount that she asked for) she is out of order to keep us hanging on all weekend to know whether she has agreed to her own request .

I think one reason we are so bitter is that, yes, it is supposed to be a buyer's market but that only seems to apply to us as vendors. The house we want has been veiwed for the third time by ftbers this weekend so it is likely we will miss out there . It was near a lovely primary with space for ds1 (YR now). There are NO other schools here with places and no other comparable houses in that area and .

Someone asked wouldn't I want to know of potential problems in the house I buy. But, as I have said, we had a simialr survey on this house and we held our nerve and went ahead. We've never regretted it and most of the 'issues' raised were totally irrelevant. Those we did have to address (wooden windows needed redoing, guttering needed repairs and cleaning, property would benefit from redecoration - no shit sherlock) we could see for ourselves anyway. This time around we are taking a friend who is a structural engineer to the house - I do appreciate most people are not lucky enough to have such a friend.

I will say that I do understand that surveyors are bound by insurance matters etc to be ridiculously cautious - most are actually more honest when you give them a ring and they are not 'on record' - wonder if our buyer has done that.
I don't think it's helpful to have a written list of everything that 'could' go wrong - most would apply to any (old) house.

Lecce - can you break the £10k drop into a list where you say 'We have dropped £500 for the xyz, £2000 for the abc'.

so you have something tangible you can say accounts for some of the problems? Are there any you can deal with yourselves?

NB: our buyer is v tricky but we try to make list of the things and cross them off (while spending as little as possible).

YANBU. Not at all.

I bought a Victorian flat 5 years ago and had it surveyed for the mortgage. No problems flagged up. I tried to sell it 2 1/2 years later and was shocked when the buyer's surveyor flagged up "possible structural problems" as it was built over a culvert (small underground stream). To cut a long story short, 4 successive buyers pulled out due to this, as they all copied the original survey, despite me getting not one but two structural surveys which said there were no structural problems. Apparantly one of the surveyors told an interested party "not to touch it with a barge pole".

I went back to my surveyor, DM Hall, who told me that structural problems could indeed develop in 21/2 years, despite no leaks, cracks or internal evidence. They suggested that the spray chemical woodworm treatment I had carried out may have caused it! (not that it had much woodworm, its just one of the usual things they recommend to cover themselves and then the mortgage company picks up on it and insists you do it).

21/2 years later, with seller's surveys now introduced, I got my structural survey updated and armed with this, got my own survey. Magically, the imaginary fictitous structural problems had disappeared. Property sold quickly and it was never an issue.

However, I lost 15k due to the drop in the market and had to live in a property I no longer wanted and put my life on hold for 2 1/2 years!

Badly regulated profession. In fact, so loosely is it regulated, and so low the level of competence required, I wouldn't term it a profession at all.

"... had it surveyed for the mortgage ...^

Was this simply a mortgage valuation?

If you want to pursue a complaint, contact the company and ask for their complaints procedure.

If not satisfied, contact RICS as their members have to provide Professional Indemnity Insurance.