Eek, valuation survey amount less than our agreed offer - advice needed please!

[oolaroola]

Am on the buyers support thread but just throwing this out to the wider wisdom for advice.
So, we were told last week that the mortgage valuation survey had decided the property was worth the purchase price.
We have just had the paperwork back for the mortgage offer and notice that the valuation is in fact 15k less.
The interest rate we will pay is unchanged.
As first timers we are unsure of the implications of this.
Any advice on what to do if anything gratefully received!
We are due to exchange next thurs. We are in touch with the vendor directly and DH has told them what has happened. They have just signed a lease on a rental property.

Its not uncommon unfortunately, itll all depend on whether the vendor will agree to drop his price Im afraid. DB had this with a new build and he had to find the difference, it was about £7000 iirc.

What the banks think it is worth is based on previous selling prices and being pessimistic much of the time. If they are happy to give you a mortgage of the amount you require on the property despite the difference in valuation, you can still go ahead without a problem. I would only do this if you think that you'll be in the house a decent amount of time, so that you don't end up selling it for less than you bought it for. If house prices are going up in your area, it could be that you are offering a more realistic price than the bank's surveyor.

Are they still willing to lend you the ammount you need for the house? If they were overly concerned I'd have thought they would ahve reduced the ammount they were willing to lend. Can you find any comparible properties on Zoopla to give you an indication of what the house is worth?

If it is worth less than you are paying then you may regret buying if you want to move in the next few years, but if you are going to stay in the house long term and love it then its worth what you're happy to pay for it.

Thankyou for your help so far.
Yes the bank are still lending us what we need. And yes we absolutely LOVE the house. we would like to be there a long time, but it is a bit of a stretch for us and I suppose it does make us feel a bit uneasy that it's been valued by professionals at less then we have agreed to pay.
Also, until you've actually lived in a house and the area you never quite know a 100% whether you will stay a long time.
First time jitters are bad enough!

oola, in that case I would go ahead

This happened to us 10 years ago. At the time prices were rising, there are very few similar properties where we live and this one is on an especially desirable road.

We had plenty of equity so the mortgage wasn't an issue for us.

We decided to go ahead but we did go back to the vendor and revise our offer. The figure we agreed on basically split the difference between the original offer and the valuation. The vendor wasn't very happy but did accept it after a bit of negotiating. (It turned out they had had another sale fall through for the same reason!)

When we applied for our mortgage I did ask what would happen if the house was valued at less than we wanted to pay and were told it would only be an issue with the mortgage company if we were paying 10% or more over the valuation.

As such I didn't mind if the surveyor valued it less as long as it was under 10%. As you love the house I would personally not do anything about it.

The mortgage company are still happy to lend you the money, and even if you go to sell it in future, the actual value is what a buyer is inclined to pay. It may go up or down.
If you asked for another valuation it might well be 10% higher or lower than this one. It's just an estimate.

So the plot thickens in that the mortgage broker gave the surveyor the wrong figure as the purchase price!
Hopefully the minor panic is over and this won't throw up any other problems when we come to complete.
Thanks for all the input so far, much appreciated...x