Mortgage valuation low - advice please!

[blinkineckmum]

The property we're buying has just been valued much lower than we offered. Our mortgage advisor thinks we should just ask for them to accept lower. The estate agent wants us to appeal the valuation. I like the idea of a lower price but don't want to lose the house. Not sure how to proceed. Any ideas or advice? Thanks

The EA will want you to appeal so that they can get max commission, i would try to get the vendors to lower the offer, see what they say - if its in black and white from the valuation its not like you are being cheeky. good luck!

Have you looked at what services like Zoopla or similar say the house is worth?
m.zoopla.co.uk/home-values/

What would be your grounds for appeal? What did they get wrong? Did they miscount the number of bathrooms/bedrooms? Miscalculated the square footage?

It's interesting. The zoopla valuation is higher than our offer...

Whose valuation was it that came out lower? Your own surveyors? I can't see the point of appealing the valuation, (presumably so that the mortgage offer is less?) I would agree with your mortgage advisor.

As a mortgage adviser I'd take the advice of your mortgage adviser

Who did the valuation? I would say it's unlikely to get amended. Was it under by much?

Thanks. This is helpful. I'm not sure they'd drop by the full amount as it's much lower than their 'offers over' price, and they received a highwr offer than ours. Should we offer to meet in the middle?

Eh? You would trust the opinion of an unqualified Estate Agent, out for as much commission as they can get, over a qualified surveyor (I'm assuming it was a surveyor on behalf of a mortgage company?).

It is very unusual for appealed valuations to be upheld, and you would need evidence to support it (local similar properties usually)

Zoopl valuations can be really misleading so I would not go by that.

When a valuation for one of my houses came back lower I was told appeals are rarely successful so I didn't bother.

I would just go back to them and offer whatever reduced price you would still be happy paying.

Just put the difference on your credit card. It's all just debt, after all.

AnalyticalChick - I think we could do with an irony font.

Plenty of those on here with vested interests in property prices remaining high will think you're being entirely serious.

We’ve offered over the valuation to secure a property, we did get the valuation improved but not by much and we had to come up with the cash between the offer and the mortgage amount.

If they had another offer, I don’t fancy your chances of negotiating the offer down, you can try but presumably they’ll go back to the other buyers who may have the cash. If you don’t have it though, worth trying the revaluation.

The difference between valuation and offer is £18.5k.
The interesting thing is that the same happened to the house we're hoping to move from. The buyers valuation came back at £43k under their offer. They appealed and it did go up by £20k. We did not budge and they stuck to their offer. They were FTB though and couldn't raise the deposit. In this case the LTV is affected, so we would have to pay a slightly higher interest rate, but we can still afford the property.
Thanks for all the comments so far.

I'd ask exactly what would be needed for there to be a chance of a successful appeal of the valuation (probably evidence of a certain number of similar properties in the area going for more in the last so many months). Then go back to estate agent and say I can offer what current valuation says or you provide me with X requirements for the appeal to be successful. That way if agent can't get that evidence you know house is overpriced.

If they received a higher offer than yours why did they accept yours?

We were proceedable and had sold to first time buyers.

Zoopla 'valuations' always come out high. I sometimes check my home against actual sale prices (I live in a block of flats so it's easy to check) and I agree with pp that the EA wants a higher valuation too so he gets more money.

Thanks all. Will update.

Update
Thank you all. You have saved me some time and money. I asked the vendor to drop her price and she has accepted a lower offer. It was on at offers over £300k, we agreed £308,500, valued at £290k.
We've now agreed a new price of £300k. We didn't want to lose it or lose our buyers, and our mortgage isn't affected, so we're happy with the outcome.

Glad you have a solution, my comment would be that Zoopla valuations are made up completely. We did an extension and then went on and edited the details to have the extra bedrooms and floor space and the next day the valuation was up by 80k or whatever, with no checking by anyone.
So if you're selling just go along and bump the value up to whatever you like.

Glad to hear you got it sorted OP.