Down valuation options

[Pepperxo]

Valuation came back 20k under we can't afford to absorb that much. What are our options even 10k feels like a lot to stomach to meet in the middle this is with Halifax . We love the house we can't go to another mortgage provider as DH is a contractor what options do we have?

Why would you pay more than it has been valued at by a professional valuer?

Halifax down valued the house we bought by 15k. Sellers agreed 5k off and we absorbed the rest.

Halifax have just downvalued our house by £15k as well. Sounds like they have form! Wish our buyers would go with another lender, we're now disputing their downvaluation and waiting for them to send another of their miserable surveyors out. He was here for less than 5 minutes last time!

The surveyor they sent out to our vendors house a was also extremely rude apparently.

I'd go back to the seller & state that you love the house but unfortunately it's been overvalued & you are required to reduce offer by £20k, with evidence.
Alongside this, contact mortgage valuer, ask how they reached valuation & If there is anything you can provide that could make them reconsider - evidence of unique features/refurb work, whatever.

Have you had a private valuation through a surveyor? That would be a much more realistic valuation than the bank's valuation.

Are you aware who they used to do the valuation? Can't remember the name of the company Barclays used to do ours but I know Halifax use them too and they are dire. So many complaints about down valuing on their feedback. Ours lost the house keys (to the empty property we are buying) for 2wks.

I think you'll probably have to have a word with the seller to see if they will absorb most of the cost, other than that you could try to get Halifax to re-do the valuation but that will take a while.

The building society are probably predicting a fall in prices following the end of the stamp duty holiday. If you went ahead with the purchase, you might find yourself in negative equity, unable to sell.

This happened to us in July with a house we were buying. We loved the house and could afford to make up the difference and we also tried to provide evidence that the value was higher by finding examples of local sold properties. The purchase fell through for another reason, but looking back I’m glad. It was overpriced and would have left us in negative equity for years.

@catfeets who do you think do bank valuations... if not a surveyor?

Also the chance of you changing a valuers valuation is near zero... unless they have missed something... ie an extra bedroom or garage etc

So we offered 394500. It's in a really lovely area approximately 1700 square feet it's 20 years old and does need some work doing but just cosmetic it would be the home DD goes to high school. The local area does have some crazy asking prices compared to one year ago one of the houses is much smaller and asking 410 and that has gone STTC. We are happy with the price we were expecting to pay, we are at 80 percent ltv and we don't want to have to go up 85 as the rate is much higher we can't afford 20k
Really disappointed 😞

So the bump in price is purely to do with the stamp duty holiday... which you won't benefit from, so it looks like the surveyor has worked that one out for you

You can contact the surveyor and ask them to reconsider if you then back it up with evidence of similar properties and what they've gone for, which justify your offer. We had our valuation increased when I did that, but I'd imagine it depends on the surveyor and open they are to it.

Why would anyone pay more for a house than it has been valued at? The surveyor would have factored in various elements including the stamp duty holiday which has just bumped up house prices. Please don't buy a house which is overvalued. Surveyors will know much mere than you or I as that is their job

This is kind of the last chance for us until next year 3 properties would have fallen through in the last year thats 3 mortgage credit checks so we are going to have to wait until next year so no more damage is done to credit score.

Walk away, the next buyers are going to just have the same problems, sellers who have artificially raised their prices due to the stamp duty holiday saving, sellers just being greedy.

@Alexalee don't be a twat. I'm not an idiot, although it seems you might be.
They generally employ a massive COMPANY to do the valuations for them, they don't have their own surveyors. They use cheap, crappy companies to do this basic work for them, not decent surveyors. The vast majority of these companies have reams of bad reviews about undervaluation, not actually turning up etc.

If you actually read my post properly it states our bank used one so yes I do fucking know it's a surveyor 🙄. Maybe read properly instead of trying to sound clever.

A COMPANY of surveyors...

@catfeets they will use someone like countrywide who in turn use firms who are on their panel to take the work, who also accept work direct and from other banks. So chances are you'd get the same surveyor just a different logo and the surveyor gets paid less after countrywide take their cut. The amount of times I have seen valuations for the same property go to the same surveyor through different lenders...it happens all the time.

@Dazedandconfused10 I think it was countrywide who did ours. They were terrible - not worried at all about losing someone's house keys for 2 weeks.
There's also plenty of comments online about not actually sending qualified surveyors for valuations.

@catfeets the surveyors are all qualified, but because they pay such appalingly bad fees they get passed from one firm to another until someone finally picks it up, if they happen to be in the area for a job that actually pays a decent fee. Its a call centre type set up so different teams for each different part of the process so I'm not surprised they weren't helpful!

@Pepperxo

So we offered 394500. It's in a really lovely area approximately 1700 square feet it's 20 years old and does need some work doing but just cosmetic it would be the home DD goes to high school. The local area does have some crazy asking prices compared to one year ago one of the houses is much smaller and asking 410 and that has gone STTC. We are happy with the price we were expecting to pay, we are at 80 percent ltv and we don't want to have to go up 85 as the rate is much higher we can't afford 20k Really disappointed 😞

why not just go from 80 to 85% LTV? You won't have to pay any more upfront, how much worse is the interest rate on 85 LTV?

Re who does the valuations - I used to be a manager for a mortgage provider and the company I worked for did different sorts of mortgage valuations. Most were done by one of a panel of surveyors but some were what we called drive by valuations where a senior member of staff just drove or walked by to check the property was still standing. The actual valuation was just estimated using historic data. I was once asked to go and visit an unusual property which was near my office just to confirm it was there and to check the inside was habitable and that the number of bedrooms matched the description. I had zero experience in valuing or assessing property. This method admittedly wes only used where the loan to value ratio was quite low. I've not been in the business for 14 years now so I imagine much has changed!

I'm not moving up from 80-85 percent we will be paying an extra £200 every month. I think we will ask seller to renegotiate and at a push meet in the middle I question where estate agents are getting their figures from .

I see that you have already decided to try to negotiate with the sellers. That's the only sensible option. It would be foolish to pay sigificantly more than the house is worth.

the reason is the English system is different from Scottish.
is the dilemma of using surveyors instructed by vendor/agent, in this this case you leave the door wide open for the agent to only use surveyors who's willing to up the price.
same problem with lenders, surveyors keeps them sweet and getting contract if they down value property and creating that buffer zone in case repossession .
purchased recently, desktop valuation came back with the house undervalued, even though 50K plus annex/garage added to it recently