Any ideas how to ensure the house valuation is on the low side?

[Iliveinahovel]

I need a valuation to be on the low side for the house I now live in. Not out-of-this-world low, but somewhere realistic, i.e. 10% to 15% lower than an "average" similar house would be valued at. Currently the house is probably "average" with respect to the overall appeal and condition.

Have around 6 months until the valuation will be done. Any ideas? Let the garden overgrow?

Get a valuation from one of those 'We'll buy your house' companies. They're routinely on the low side.

Go to the charity shops near you and buy all the dusty tat you can find. Make sure every surface is covered.

Foster a whole bunch of cats and make sure their litter trays are nice and full and out in the open when the estate agent comes round.

Facebook marketplace can provide all manner of broken trampolines and crap garden furniture that ‘needs gone’ to really reduce your kerb appeal.

What about smoking in the house and leaving cigarette packets about with ash trays?

A couple of ideas worth considering:

Can you remove a bedroom? I know that sounds extreme but if there are two bedrooms next to each other with a plasterboard wall then knocking them together may well devalue the house. eg if you have a spare room. Easier to replace afterwards. EG you bought a 4 bed property but are now asking an agent to value a 3 bed property.

Can you have a sitting tenant in it? IE someone with an ongoing legal rental contract on the property? You'd need to work out how to make sure you have a proper legal contract for this without potentially leaving yourself homeless but it does reduce value quite a bit.

Do you plan to replace either a kitchen or bathroom in the next couple of years? If so you could consider removing it prior to valuation and replacing it afterwards, although the cost of replacing might be more than the saving so only probably worth doing if you are planning on changing anyway.

In your position I would then go out and get eg 10 agent valuations, asking them all to value as low as possible explaining the reason. And then I'd send the lowest 3 to ex-h.

Good luck!

He won’t get half for a short marriage and the property pre dates him. Go to a solicitor to get advice. If it goes to court, the judge may agree with a low off fir him to ‘fuck off’. He won’t get half.
Get an EA round to value it for divorce. Tell them your situation, they’ll then lower the value for you, which you will need for your solicitor anyway.

The opening post sounds devious to me.

Did you get valuations at the time? I wonder if you would be able to use the value then as I can't see how he can claim on appreciation in value or increase in equity by your payments since the agreement was made? I would get mote advice and push for the values at the time of the divorce be used for calculations.

When I had a private valuation done for a house that I wanted to be low to minimise tax implications I had a frank discussion with the surveyor and he kindly noted my suggested price as it wasn’t impossibly unreasonable.

That should say probate. Paying a surveyor rather than a estate agent might help!

tell the agent you want a valuation for a very quick sale

I have experience of this sort of, it was my house but he wanted a lump sum as part of our settlement, he needed the money, in the end I got the maximum mortgage I could to buy him out and made him an offer, I literally couldn't afford anymore so he accepted it. It wasn't 50% but it was a very good offer which he didn't deserve.

Paint the walls a bright/ugly colour, remove curtains, carpets and light fittings, don't do any gardening for the next six months, leave dead flowers in a vase, come on OP use you imagination!

Invite someone over to smoke in all the rooms prior to valuation. Don't wash up for a week before, stop cleaning a month or so before. Visible mouse traps. Be as rude as possible (without it seeming obvious), so the valuer just really dislikes you. Create an appearance of damp (soak some wall paper so it starts to fall...). Stinking, manky bathroom. Smear something on the front door (mud and some kind of food perhaps?).

A sitting tenant with a long rental (obv a friend who won’t use it) is a great idea. Otherwise generally a bit run down is good (I haven’t googled it but can you get products which look/smell like damp?)

On the unpleasant smell front, we had prawns a while ago and put the shells in a plastic bag to put straight in outside bin but DH forgot and left the bag by our sofa. After a couple of weeks, the place stunk to high heaven but we couldn’t work out where the smell was coming from!

If ex-DH has not kept any part of his side of the deal, that could be a bargaining chip. Worth a conversation with the lawyers to see if it would be worth revisiting the settlement and what it means considering that 20% 7 years ago is very different to 20% now.

If you can get hold of some daffodils leave rhem to rot in a vase its fucking horrendous

@goody2shooz

Have you spoken to a lawyer about this? If it was yours before you married, the marriage was less than two years, and he hasn’t contributed to the mortgage - are you quite sure he has a claim on it?

Yes I think this is more to the point OP - does he really have a claim at all after such a short marriage, no investment by him, and your home originally? Esp if you are planning to stay there and it will be children's main home.

In current market I think you'd have to do things that really affected fabric of property to devalue it significantly and really not sure that's worth it. Or a good idea tbh.

Can't your ex just be reasonable about it?

How much is he asking for?

Re my post above - sorry, I've just read on further:

He cannot expect a share in equity you have paid off since he left - The valuation of 20% should be at the date that agreement was reached surely? Not years later when you have paid off more and prices increased (on your watch, while you were in sole charge of maintaining property and paying mortgage)

I left my mum in charge of letting them in to value my house whilst I was at work. Needed it for a divorce, I'd paid £33k deposit myself plus half the bills for 3 years, he had contributed about £2k to the deposit and half the bills. I'd given in to the fact I was going to lose out however my mum told the man doing the valuation what it was for and he was absolutely brilliant. Brutally low valuation, barely looked around and off he went 😄. Maybe he had been through similar and/or I just hit lucky. My mum was obviously extremely proud of herself and still thinks she's some sort of super negotiator!

Tell the estate agents you have no intention of putting the house on the market, but you are happy to pay for a valuation. They will (within reason) give you a low valuation.

Tell the estate agents why you want the property valued - they are generally pretty sympathetic especially if they’re not actually going to get a sale out of it, they’ll do it quickly and move on.

And then maybe looking into proceedings against whichever solicitor handled your divorce because advising you to offer a 20% share in a premarital asset that had the potential to increase in value like a house is quite possibly the shoddiest legal work I’ve seen.

At a minimum it should have been time limited or fixed to value at the time of legal proceedings - not leaving you wide open to whatever property increases have happened over the last 8 years ffs.

Surveyors tend to value lower than estate agents. Estate agents however may be more likely to be sympathetic to your story (& aren’t held to standards by a governing body in the same way surveyors are). I’d chat informally to a couple of local agents first and go from there…

Knew this was to buy out an ex before I read your post! My Mum and Dad had a nasty, nasty divorce following him cheating. She stayed in the house and let the cats piss all over the floors in one room, ripped up flooring, didn’t sort the garden, put old furniture in the front garden, refused to get the leak in the bathroom looked at so it went into the kitchen. She let kids on the estate come and draw all over the brick walls outside.

The house was an actual shithole. It stunk. Would not recommend. She got it valued super low though and then got a loan to redo it.

Oh and she started smoking inside too.

@Suzanne999

Let the garden go. Let weeds grow in driveway. Chip paint wherever possible Scuff the walls up a bit Make some damp patches on indoor walls or ceilings, just enough to stain ( easy to paint over afterwards) Generally run down the kerb appeal as much as you can.

Please don't do this if the house is rented and belongs to someone else, that would be really spiteful.

Do you have to have a particular surveyor?

I had to have a RICS registered one to do my valuation. It wasn't for the purposes of selling, so it isn't an estate agent that does it, but a building surveyor.

He had to follow 'red book valuation' rules, which are very specific and don't let them just pick and choose whatever value you say. Rather, they have to compare the house to similar houses that have sold within a specific distance, within the past year/months, and they have to provide the evidence of which houses they used. It is different to market value, because your house might sell for more or less than 'similar' ones nearby. The flexibility the surveyor has is in choosing which houses to use as comparables, which obviously only gives them a degree of flexibility! they can choose the lowest ones that they think would be accepted, if you ask for a low valuation, or the highest ones that they think would be acceptable if you ask for a high valuation, but the limits are essentially what has sold in the area recently. If the person/body/housing assocation etc that is agreeing on the valuation don't think that the comparables chosen are acceptable, they can send it back and refuse it.

Of course you might not need to have that particular sort of valuation done - it depends on the purpose of the valuation and who is asking for it and what qualifications they require from the surveyor or whether they would accept an estate agent one if you think that would be lower.