Can I complain/is it worth it?

[inscotland]

Last year we had our house surveyed for our new mortgage. It came in at £235,000. Given that value we went ahead and installed a new kitchen that cost £20,000.

The house is going on the market as we're moving abroad however, the valuation now is £185,000 which is a £50,000 drop. The surveyor today along with others that I have taken advice from say that our property was never worth £235,000 last year and that the Surveyor who did it grossley inflated the price.

The thing is we will now not get back a penny of what we've spent on quite a few things but mainly the kitchen which we only put in based on the valuation of £235,000.

Do you think we should complain? Will it get us anywhere?

did you get more than one quote done?

Don't know much about this but I thought the surveys you have done for purposes of remortgaging are very basic ones done by the mortgage company and are for their benefit, not for yours - i.e. they are surveying with a view to establishing if they could get their money back if you default on the mortgage. Obviously, you would think that should have some correlation to the value on the open market but I expect they will try to wriggle out of it in that way on the basis that it was not a full survey.

Given the figures, is it really that much of an over-valuation anyway? Yes, it's a drop of 20% but houses near us have dropped by quite a bit more than that in the same period. Our neighbours house which went on the market at 850k last summer has finally sold for 650k,

how would you prove it was inflated?

you could check rightmove and other sites i should thikn to see what houses have sold for in the last few years to give you an idea

in all fairness, you chose to spend the money and in a time when house prices and the market was crashing

Thanks for your input. The kitchen went in before the house price crash.

the drop doesn't seem unreasonable if it was pre the crash.
re the kitchen spend, in general you don't back back the money you spend.

but you would not increase or maintain the value of your home by £20 000 by putting in the kitchen

there is probably an ombudsman , try the royal institite for chartered surveyors too.

Message withdrawn

Can I just check - are you actually in Scotland because the laws are different in some areas up there.

Mortgage surveys tend to be drive by surveys (ie they pass the house in the car and approximate a value based on the average price in the area and how well kept it looked). It tends to be an overestimate BECAUSE the purpose of the mortgage valuation is to ensure that in the event of default the mortgage company can sell for a high enough price to make it worth their while.

The do not take into account internal fittings (sorry) so they wouldn't have taken any improvements past or pending into account.

I think the only way you would get anything is if you get the present valuer to give you a written statement saying the old survey was bunk and excessively so, plus show other evidence (ie from the land registry what sold for what in your area). And then you might, just might get your survey cost back, but it's very unlikely you'd get any more because it's an opinion and not binding in any way.

Sorry