Mortgage survey has come up short

[LingDiLong]

Argh! We've agreed a price on a house we want to buy and a mortgage. The mortgage provider's Surveyor has been and reckons it's worth 10k less than the asking price. I'm not convinced with his reasoning behind it and the previous buyer's surveyor had no issues with the things he's mentioned.

SO has anyone had any success arguing with a mortgage provider over something like this? I'm wondering if we can get another survey commissioned and if we do will they accept this second opinion?

Thanks!

Doubt they'll bodge.

You should not agree - and Im guessing this is verbal rather than contractal - until you have all the funds in place.

You only have 2 options:

1. Knock 10k off your offer.
2. Get another 10k from elsewhere.

It could just be that the surveyor reckons you are paying over the odds if there is no reason readily apparent in the survey (such as the roof in a dangerous state). When you say previous buyer, do you mean there was someone else who was going to buy the house but it fell through, or do you mean the previous buyer who is now the current vendor?

Personally I would be inclined to go back and offer less given the survey says it is worth less.

If the estate agent can give the surveyor comparable sales prices for similar properties then they should. Otherwise you need to offer a reduced price.

If you're buying this place why would you want to pay £10k more than it's worth?!

You go back to vendors and tell them and they either knock off the £10k or you find the extra £10k (assuming it won't muck up loan to value) or you each meet somewhere in the middle.

This happened to us. We explained to the vendor and split the difference....so in your example they brought the price down 5k and we put 5k extra deposit in. We solk 3 years later for a 30k profit so all worked out ok. Depends how much you want it I suppose.....

sold! not solk! fat fingers

I had this problem when we sold our house, and we got the surveyor to change his valuation £15k upwards (as we'd had three offers at the same price, so that was clearly it's market value). So it can be done :)

But yes, I don't see how it's such a problem if you're the buyer.

I was the buyer in this position and we couldn't get the survey changed. The seller had to have work done on the house to release the retention. The seller was not willing to negotiate 10k off because it was only 2k of work with 8k potential damage if it wasn't done. I'll be honest, it was a nightmare and took ages. We ended up having to apply for the mortgage again because the offer expired which meant we needed a survey again to!

I mean it's the now vendor Issy!

I don't mind paying the 10k more because I think the survey is a load of bollocks frankly. The house is already a good 15-20k less than the other houses in the road and so a really good price. The issue they have objected to is based on personal opinion not actual fact.

Thanks for all the replies. Problem solved, my parents are going to lend us some money to fill the shortfall.