Home report question.

[Maybee]

Our house is about to go on sale in Scotland. EAs charge £480 for the home report although I found an independent company who do them for £199 who then submits report to EA. Has anyone done this? £480 seems v expensive although obviously we need to sell and if it is better to get report done with EA with whom we are selling I'll do it. Any experience of this?

Hi there,
We had the same dilemma when getting our home report. We eventually went for the £480 one because when we looked into it the cheaper ones often don't give you a valuation of your house because legally this does not have to be included. However most people wanting to buy your house will need to have it valued for mortgage purposes and the way the market is at present will be asking you to pay for this! So you will end up paying around £200 for this valuation.
Also (I spent a long time on the phone enquiring about this!) it useful to ask the company you're thinking of using which lender panels they are on. This means which banks will accept their valuations for mortgage purposes. Some of the smaller home report companies are not on the major banks panels which again means your buyer will come back to you asking you to get a report from a home report company which their lender will approve.
We ended up using j and e shepherds who were recommended by our estate agent and also when I did a comparison with other companies they came out well on price and service. We had no problems with them, very thorough and explained the whole process to us as they went through the house. Oh and if you search for them using google and fill in their form you can get a 10% discount on your report!!!
Now we just have to sell our house!!! Hope this helps, sorry it's so long.

Thanks Aal, Are you selling in Scotland as well? Which EA are you selling with?

Yes I'm in Scotland, west Lothian. We're using Kirkton property as our estate agents who are local to the area. We got around 5 EA to visit and quote us fees and KPC were very reasonable and we knew some people who recommended them. We've been on the market for almost a month and though it was slow to begin with we've now had 2 viewings this week! Fingers crossed!

Thats promising here's hoping.:)