Getting a house valuation for buying out partner

[shrewdasserpentsinnocentasdoves]

I'm separated and have previously been thinking of selling our home, but am now thinking that I could buy out my husband's half.

How do you get a fair valuation? Presumably you don't ask estate agents because you're not actually selling the home. Who can you rely on to give you a fair valuation?

I think you should ask estate agents as if you were intending on selling. Get three estimates and maybe ask them what you should market at if you were looking for a quick sale too then you might get more accurate valuations rather than them
inflating the value to get you to sign up with them.

You can ask estate agents to do evaluations. Just tell them you are going to put it on the market and need to know the value. Or you could pay for a survey.

estate agents will tend to over value. They want your business and they want to sell at the highest value. A survey will be more conservative. You can also look at sold prices and trends in the area. Then negotiate with your ex.

There are advantages for both of you in a quick release of the money. You will only know the true value if you market and sell it.

Look on rightMove sold prices for similar as well
be aware that most offers will be 5% ish less than advertised price.

have you agreed 50:50 split ? Are their other assets?

We haven't really agreed anything yet. I think he is assuming 50:50 which I would be happy with.

The other asset is pension. His will be significantly biggen than mine so I am intending to ask for a 50:50 split there as well. I haven't fully discussed this with him, and I know he will be really pissed off about it. So in theory I ought to delay the house sale to use as leverage for pensions. But I just want to get the house stuff done.

You really need to look at it holistically

you may or not be entitled to 50% of his pension ( and his yours).and house Could be more or less so I wouldn’t do the house until all agreed.

I got 3 valuations and took the mean average of those.
I’ve taken the equity as my share of the divorce.
I could only get a very small mortgage on my wage so I need to put a big deposit down as I can’t afford to keep the FMH.

You get a valuation from an estate agent and he gets the same. Hopefully they should be the same. Split the difference if not.

I'm pretty sure I'd be entitled to 50% of his pension. We do the same public sector job. When we married, I was earning slightly more than him. I then went part time after having children and only returned to full time when youngest child was in Y8. I now earn slightly less then him but with a massive pension deficit due to all the years of PT.

What reasons would there be why someone wouldn't be entitled to 50:50 pension?

@Frazzled54 did you get the valuations from estate agents or from surveyors?

It does sound like a long marriage with DC that a 50:50 division of all assets would be the starting point.

Presumably you are both housing the DC and sharing care 50:50 or they have since flown the nest?

I used 3 seperate EA. The valuations varied by £20k but I checked similar properties in the area and went with the most sensible price.

My ExH has a huge pension (public sector) but I offset it with my smaller one and the equity from the property (when it sells) as need to rehouse the DC and my wage doesn’t give me a big enough mortgage to buy something reasonable in the area I want.

I got three valuations from estate agents when divorcing. Told them why and they gave lower valuations to allow for circumstances. Remember to allow costs for selling even if one of you stays in property. Pensions aren't usually included as the same £ value as they're not cash. For ours, it was 80p for every £1. I had more of the equity in property to offset my XH's larger pension. (I do have my own pension too and time to add to it so was happy to do this). If your H has a large pension and public sector, you'll need an actuarial report.
I basically added up all the money, cars, house and pension and divided it between us (our split wasn't 50/50 but extenuating circumstances).

I didn’t say you wouldnt
i said it’s not a given as there’s no automatic entitlement to 50:50. there’s an entitlement to a fair share, which can be more or less than 50%. and it will depend on a whole bunch of information thats not available here

my point was its best to agree the overall settlement before piecemeal breaking bits up to avoid problems down the line .

I got three estate agent valuations and went with the middle one.

We left Pensions alone as they were relatively the same.

Kids all grown up so no worries there.

Married 25yrs

Well if you want 50% of his then he should get 50% of yours too.

Re: house, just say to agents you are splitting and cant afford to buy each other out so need a quick sale. Empahsise that so they price realistically. Otherwise they will over inflate

We were told by a judge that one person provides a list of 5 EAs, the other chooses 3 from that list and instruct valuations from you both on those three. The valuation used was the average all three.

Thanks for all these replies.

@GreenLeaf25 i like the suggestion of getting valuation quoted for a quick sale. And of course youre right, I meant a 50:50 split of the total joint pension pot not just his.

I did this 2 years ago, I still had to have a valuation (this may be dependant on my mortgage provider, I’m not sure if it’s standard)

the ex and I hashed it out - obviously he wanted as much money he could get, but we also needed work done to the house for it to sell at the valuation cost which would take time so he backed down,

I had 3 valuations from different companies - one was known for over valuing so went with the paperwork who valued least.

if your ex is keen for his share, this might work in your favour, rather than potentially wait months for a sale/negotiations etc to go through

Thanks for replies.

@PastaBelly did you get your valuations from wstate agents or did you pay for surveyors?

the quotes came from estate agents. I stuck with the same mortgage company but they still required a surveyor call out (it was basically a pen pushing tick box exercise I think, Quick Look at the house) as it counted as a new/re mortgage, but the surveyor had no input on the house valuation

What you need is a divorce and proper financial settlement that will take into account pensions etc.

When I attempted to sell my former house to the tenants I got a formal valuation from an agent I trusted giving me the price he thought the property might realise NOT what he would put it on the market for