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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

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Original poster

To ask if this has happened to you? (House buying/selling survey)

24 replies

Flossyfloof · 01/12/2019 13:03

My house went up for sale a few weeks ago. I marketed it at significantly less than the first price suggested by the agent because I want a quick sale. I accepted an offer a few thousand below the asking price and everything was going swimmingly until...the survey came back on Friday. The mortgage lender’s surveyor has valued it at £11,000 less than the offer and my purchasers want to renegotiate. If I had been greedy and grasping and put my house up for the max price, I could understand the survey valuation better. Reviews for the company - Countrywide Surveying - are overwhelmingly awful - they make a practice of undervaluing, I have no idea why.
Aibu to ask if you have been in a similar situation and, if so, how it was resolved? What would you do?

OP posts:

Dazedandconfused10 · 01/12/2019 13:09

Countrywide outsource as well as have their own surveyors so it might not have been 'their' surveyor. Have you looked for comparable sold prices to back up your figure?

juliej00ls · 01/12/2019 13:10

Leave the house on the market and ask the agent to actively market it. You don’t need to renegotiate your price if you feel it is reasonable and are confident in your estate agents valuation. You don’t have to sell to them. They can try this trick on someone else.

DesperateElf · 01/12/2019 13:13

Not been in this position but it seems to be more common now, yes. I'd suggest you post on moneysavingexpert forums for more advice. If you are willing to share a link to the property that'd help. (But I understand if you don't want to).

Bookishandblondish · 01/12/2019 13:17

I was the buyer in this scenario. Asked to renegotiate and ended up walking away - had no choice as couldn’t make the difference up. Market is funny at the moment - suspect mortgage companies are being conservative due to uncertainty.

MarchionessOfCholmondeley · 01/12/2019 13:18

You have two options, you can either accept the lower amount or refuse to negotiate and keep the house on the market and hope to find another seller who has a mortgage company willing to lend at a price you are willing to accept.

We once had a valuation come back £4k less than we had offered on a house. We had no option but to walk away when the vendors refused to negotiate. The house stayed on the market for a very long time after that and eventually sold for about 10k less than we had offered.

A house is only worth what someone is willing to pay or obtain a mortgage valuation for....

Original poster

Flossyfloof · 01/12/2019 13:18

I’ve always thought people were silly not to share info when selling houses...but I’m not sure if I feel comfortable doing it myself!
I don’t know how to do links, I might try to work it out...

OP posts:

Original poster

Flossyfloof · 01/12/2019 13:20

Sorry I thin’ this is a drip feed - the buyers have offered another £2,000 but that still leaves me £9,000 short of the agreed price. It’s all a gamble, isn’t it? I really wanted to be done and dusted before Winter sets in.

OP posts:

DesperateElf · 01/12/2019 13:20

juliej00ls, I wouldn't describe it as a trick. Buyers offered the price they believed they will be able to get the mortgage for.

cujo · 01/12/2019 16:06

We had this with a previous house we were selling. It was a big name bank that the mortgage valuation was for. The buyer applied for a mortgage through the local building society instead and it was fine. I think it’s cautious valuation.

milienhaus · 01/12/2019 16:09

We’re in that situation right now as the buyer except with a 10% difference ... we’re getting another valuation from a different bank but unless they come back a lot higher we can’t afford the house and will have to pull out. It’s a real shame :(

PurpleFlower1983 · 01/12/2019 16:14

I don’t think your buyers are being greedy, they might not be able to make that £11000 up that they will now need to have upfront rather than on the mortgage. This happened when I bought my first property. I was on my own and had saved a £15k deposit. The survey valued it as £3k less than our agreed price and I simply didn’t have the extra to give.

PurpleFlower1983 · 01/12/2019 16:17

Sorry I misread your post and thought you had called the buyers greedy by mixing up two lines of your post!

Do you know if your buyers have the funds to proceed without the full mortgage offer?

Frankola · 01/12/2019 16:18

Many mortgage lenders are being cautious at the moment. And they will always lend the absolute minimum a house is worth.

The buyer is tied by what the lender will give. If that means a shortfall either they need to pay the difference in cash or you both agree to leave it and walk away.

Please bear in mind though that if one surveyor has done this it's likely others will too.

CrohnicallyEarly · 01/12/2019 16:28

Our house was valued at less than we offered. However we were still able to mortgage buy it, just at a bigger LTV ratio.

Say we offered £200k, we had a £50k deposit so wanted to borrow £150k at a LTV of 75%

But when the survey came back it was valued at £190k. We still needed to borrow £150k but now it’s at a LTV of 79%. It affected the rate we got and the repayments., but they were still willing to lend us the amount we needed.

Original poster

Flossyfloof · 01/12/2019 16:31

Thanks for your observations and comments. As I said, they have offered a couple of thousand more, leaving me to make up the shortfall. I don’t know whether they have any more access to funds - they have mentioned needing to buy furniture etc. I think I am going to have to let them go. I know they really want the house but I’m afraid it might be that they can’t have it. I can’t really take a hit of £9,000.

OP posts:

Oliversmumsarmy · 01/12/2019 16:32

We had countrywide (never again)

They sent someone from Liverpool to value a 2 bed flat in Gypsy Hill.

Flat at the time was up for £125000 which was a really good price. Same block, same flats were going for £180000
Needed very little work if you could see past the boarded up windows.
Kitchen and bathroom didn’t need to be changed. A coat of paint to freshen the place up and new flooring would have made it perfect.

They valued it at £1 as they didn’t think that a flat in London was a saleable proposition as people would prefer a house.

Dazedandconfused10 · 01/12/2019 21:45

Surveyors have to justify their lower valuations. I know one lender doesn't allow it unless necessary. They base their valuation on evidence available. I could stick my house on the market for 1 million, doesn't mean it's worth that much!

They have to provide factual evidence for how they came to the valuation so ask for it. Or provide your own to counteract. But you can't go off asking prices it needs to be proven sold figures of similar properties within a set distance in the last 3 months.

LakieLady · 01/12/2019 22:09

Have you found somewhere to buy, OP? If so, it might be worth asking your vendors if they're prepared to drop a bit too.

If you could get £5k knocked off your purchase, you'd only be £4k down overall.

jimmyjammy001 · 01/12/2019 22:23

A house is only worth what someone else is willing to pay/can afford, by all means put it back on the market and it may not sell for some months and house prices may well come back down and then you would sell for even less than now, or it could go up, its a gamble.

Bluntness100 · 01/12/2019 22:26

If I was you I'd have my own survey done op, because you stand a risk this happens again.

orangeteal · 01/12/2019 22:28

Happened to us buying, when I researched it's practically impossible to get it changed. You either stick to your guns and risk losing the sale (it could happen again) or renegotiate. It's shit but from what I read it's wasted energy trying to get the valuation changed.

PickAChew · 01/12/2019 22:33

The impact of that 11,000 less depends, somewhat, on whether you're selling for half a million or 100k. If the latter, there's a risk the problem would come up again as that represents a large percentage of a buyer's potential mortgage.

Dazedandconfused10 · 01/12/2019 22:34

@bluntness100 having your own survey will do nothing, it can't be used by another bank. If there is evidence to prove the value of the property you can find that yourself

Oliversmumsarmy · 03/12/2019 11:03

I had a friend who was a surveyor.

He refused to move out of his student council house in a really tough neighbourhood because he thought every house he saw was over priced and property prices would fall in line with his expectations

Years ago he pointed to a cul de sac of houses that had been built about 5 years before.

He said that all the people who lived in the houses (very nice looking 4 bed detached with garage) were going to be declaring them selves bankrupt very soon.

The reason. They had bought the houses at a really inflated price and they were only worth £25,000

They were probably around the £150,000 mark.

He married and divorced 5 wives who wanted to move on with their lives and have children and buy their own family home but each one left when they realised he was still stuck in 1977.

His 6th wife (late 20s) inherited everything.
He had come from a very wealthy family and had art stored from the sale of his parents estate.

Whilst it was very sad when you think of the sort of life he could of had I do see similar in other surveyors I have had to value things.

I feel sorry for those that have a surveyor that regularly undervalues.

I have sold flats in purpose built blocks where there is a standard price for 1/2/3 bed flats
Only for the surveyor to value them at a price that wouldn’t buy you a dog kennel in the area.

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