does surveyors report account for local schools?

[chubbachupp]

Can someone please put to bed an argument me and DH are having?

We are in the process of buying the house we are renting. Our offer has been accepted BUT valuation has come back just over 15k lower. Nothing majorly wrong with the house either.

I understand undervaluation is common but my other theory is that the valuation DOES NOT take into account local schools. We are well within the catchment of a great primary - 0.15 km in fact; furthest place offered last year was 0.33 km (233 applications for 60 places, 30 of which went to siblings). Schools are heavily oversubscribed here so I believe property prices reflect that.

This to me explains why the valuation is lower, because the surveyor, whilst has a general idea of schools, would not understand the sheer level of competitiveness of prices. All other houses in this street with the same spec have gone for roughly same amount as our offer.

We are arguing it out as we are very gratefully receiving help from family who are natually wary of such a difference. I, however, am freaking out about getting a place in a good primary!

thanks for any info.

It depends on the surveyor, I suppose, but not everyone moving into the area will have school-age children or, if they do, not all will want them to attend that school (they may have religious preferences, want to go private etc) so its desirability may well be irrelevant and therefore it would be odd to include it in the valuation especially when catchment areas can be very elastic.

Valuations are simply what the surveyor thinks the house is worth at the moment on the open market. Agree with lala, kust because the local primary schoolis important toy ou doesn't mean itwill beto everyone in your local housing market. I think at the moment over-pricing is more common than under-valuing ;-)

Around here they pay no attention to schools etc, they look at the price of nearby houses with the same number of bedrooms. They openly pay no attention to the relative size and the only feature looked at is terraced/semi/detached.

We queried it when my MIL bought. Luckily the valuation was irrelevant, as she wasn't relying on a mortgage. And of course, since she paid what she had offered it means the value of nearby houses has risen/ dropped less.

It does make a mockery of it though. Just because a house has the same number of bedrooms as another doesn't mean they are the same!

Not directly no. The valuation will be based on similar properties and the prices they have achieved on the open market in the recent weeks/months - they are the comparables that will be used. Obviously, the price the house achieves may be positively affected by being in a catchment area, but that will only be indirectly reflected in the valuation because of the achieved sale prices of other houses in the street.

(In any case, catchments change - our house has been on a 'banker' of a road for the good school locally; this year there were over 50 siblings so the catchment shrank to less than 0.25 of a mile.)

Yes, and they also look at the quality of local supermarkets, cars driven and whether or not there is a decent bookshop.

Er, no.

If the presence of the school has an impact on house prices in the area then yes of course the surveyor takes it into account-he or she relies on information from the sale of other comparable properties in the area to inform their valuation.