Anyone successfully appealed a valuation survey (especially if it was done remotely?)

[mummabubs]

Thought our sale was progressing smoothly until this evening. We agreed a sale price of £270,000, selling to FTBs. They've been in touch to say that their mortgage lender (Nationwide) have done a remote valuation survey on our house and decided it's only worth £260,000. We are partly annoyed that they haven't been either outside or inside the property so can't get a sense of what has given them the down value... but even more infuriating is that next door sold their house three weeks before us (which is identical in every way as we're in a line of terraced new builds and we've actually got upgraded flooring and lighting in comparison). They have just had their valuation survey done last week, by a lender who came to the property in person to assess and their valuation matches £270,000. Two different agents valued our houses at £270,000-280,000 before we each went to market and the house opposite (also identical) sold last year for £275,000.

We really can't afford to take the full £10k hit as the house we've had an offer accepted on needs a lot of renovation, which we've relied on having the budget to do! Our estate agent agrees that it doesn't seem fair that they've down valued our house without sending anyone out, so they're going to request that Nationwide either send someone out themselves or whether they'd accept a valuation from an independent surveyor who is willing to come into the house.

Has anyone else successfully appealed their valuation if it was less than the agreed price? If so was this a valuation done in person or remotely? Trying not to get too stressed and feel too downhearted but it feels unfair to us and we can't bear the thought of losing the money and emotional investment that we've already placed in our new home. Please send me hope people!!

I considered challenging when we asked to borrow more on our mortgage. We had to provide 3 identical or less houses that had sold for more within the last 3 years and be on the land registry.
Problem with our street was the houses tend to be inherited and no one had moved in 3 years.
There were the same style house the next street over that had sold within 3 years but there wasn't 3 of them to compare.

For us it was wasn't worth the hassle.

These were in person valuation prior to covid.

Now how true this next part is I don't know but our Mortgage advisor told us that they don't look at the state of the house, just the floor size, and the survey lady also said that, as we were mid renovation and wanted the extra to finish, so the house wasn't even in a finished state.
Our advisor also told us when we considered appealing, that it's what the bank is willing to lose should it be repossessed rather than what estate agents say.

If the house over the road, for yous, is on land registry for 275k and there's others you can also show are the same or more than what you need, challenge it. The worst they can say is no.

Has your estate agent/solicitor confirmed via seeing the paper work that is is the 260k and the buyers aren't just saying that?

Yes, not for our main property but for our holiday home remortgage. We had to pay for a private survey though, which was done by a local surveyor and cost about £300. We still didn’t get exactly the amount of mortgage we wanted but we got about £30k closer so worth it.

@Helpsmearresult Thanks for sharing, that does sound like a real faff, I don't blame you for not pursuing it. If they requested the same of us then two houses opposite have gone for more in the last 3 years, as next door's sale is literally completing next week I doubt that will show up on land registry for a while? 🤦🏻‍♀️ I'd suspected what you were told about the condition not impacting on the value, we just figured flooring and light fittings are permanent features so might be taken into account somewhere? Who knows.

@Cherrypie32 I think this is the only option we'd be likely to have, and as our FTBs have come back blankly saying they now want to just pay £260k I doubt they'll want us to do anything that results in the price going up. (We have said to them that in the event of Nationwide refusing to value the house in person we are prepared to re-negotiate the price to share the shortfall, but we can't proceed on the basis of losing £10k if they won't consider going with another lender that would do a proper valuation.

Sorry @Helpsmearresult, meant to add that our agent has requested a copy of the valuation to confirm. Our buyers initially panicked a bit as they thought we'd pull out so I don't get the sense that they're trying to mislead us.

To be honest you will probably find they have just gone on Zoopla (or the bank equivalent) and picked that valuation amount,. If you can push for an actual surveyor I would.

@Helpsmearresult

To be honest you will probably find they have just gone on Zoopla (or the bank equivalent) and picked that valuation amount,. If you can push for an actual surveyor I would.

That's our plan I think. I'd find it much easier to accept if they'd come to visit the property and done a proper survey, and obviously if they do that and then stick with £260k then there's not a lot we can do. But especially given next door's very recent experience and the fact that we can't afford to lose the fulk £10k we're feeling a bit stuck. 🤦🏻‍♀️

We just had a surveyor value our house for almost £30,000.00 less than we'd sold it for, despite having come out and seen it. Our estate agents were brilliant, they went back to the mortgage advisor with a pack of similar properties nearby that showed our house was worth the amount originally offered. The appeal was put through but the mortgage company refused it. In the end our buyer went to a new mortgage company who sent a different surveyor out, one who had been working in our area for 20 years, and they valued it at our selling price. It was very stressful but we were lucky our buyer was willing to do that.

I was told they had to compare with comparable houses that had actually completed within the last months (so not under offer or sold stc) and were within a certain distance of our house.

I think appeals are rarely successful, but fingers crossed maybe your buyer would agree to meet half way. Good luck, it is stressful and irritating as there's so little you can do about it!

@Agatha56 I'm so glad it worked out for you. Our buyers don't seem keen to consider looking at other lenders as they think it will delay things by too much. Our ndn's sale is due to complete next week, so maybe that will help us 🤦🏻‍♀️ It is really stressful and cruel timing as we'd literally been approved for our mortgage on our purchase 10 minutes before our buyers messaged us.

We sold our mother's house last year. Apparently the valuation for the purchasers was done on some kind of drive by. They sent an email saying the valuation was something like 30K less than their offer price, we just said we were prepared to progress at the agreed price. They never said anything more about it, and bought the house.

We did, OP! Last summer. Bank’s valuation (which resulted from an in person visit, so arguably harder to appeal) came in £100K under the price we had agreed with the seller (this is London so not as huge a proportion of the sale price as the figure suggests but still a good chunk). We had been looking for ages and knew the local market pretty well so were shocked as we knew we were getting a good price. We assumed the bank was being ultra cautious due to COVID as we had a 25% deposit.

The estate agent basically put together a portfolio of similar properties close by which had sold recently with their prices and submitted it to the bank. The surveyor then agreed to revise his valuation to the agreed price. All very stressful but definitely worth appealing as our sellers couldn’t make it work at the lower valuation and we didn’t have time to go to another bank.

Make your estate agent earn their money by getting as much evidence as possible that your price reflects fair market value based on other recent local sales. Good luck!

@Hadalifeonce I'm glad your sale was able to proceed, unfortunately our buyers have already adopted the stance that they won't be offering any more than the valuation at this point as they have no additional funds, we are also in the same position as if we take the 10k hit we will go below our mortgage loan to value threshold. Nightmare. 😫

Have you seen the valuation? Maybe they are being cheeky? Ftb often are!

@metellaestinatrio

We did, OP! Last summer. Bank’s valuation (which resulted from an in person visit, so arguably harder to appeal) came in £100K under the price we had agreed with the seller (this is London so not as huge a proportion of the sale price as the figure suggests but still a good chunk). We had been looking for ages and knew the local market pretty well so were shocked as we knew we were getting a good price. We assumed the bank was being ultra cautious due to COVID as we had a 25% deposit.

The estate agent basically put together a portfolio of similar properties close by which had sold recently with their prices and submitted it to the bank. The surveyor then agreed to revise his valuation to the agreed price. All very stressful but definitely worth appealing as our sellers couldn’t make it work at the lower valuation and we didn’t have time to go to another bank.

Make your estate agent earn their money by getting as much evidence as possible that your price reflects fair market value based on other recent local sales. Good luck!

This fills me with some hope! Haven't heard back from our agent yet so will have to wait and see what he says I guess.

[quote mummabubs]@Hadalifeonce I'm glad your sale was able to proceed, unfortunately our buyers have already adopted the stance that they won't be offering any more than the valuation at this point as they have no additional funds, we are also in the same position as if we take the 10k hit we will go below our mortgage loan to value threshold. Nightmare. 😫[/quote]
Why have you buyers adopted this stance? This down valuation shoudn't really effect them unless they are at the very limit of loan to value already? ie 10% deposit? Do you know what their deposit is?

Their message to us implies that they are at the limit, but then they also phrase some things oddly as if they haven't quite grasped things (which we can understand as we were probably quite clueless when we bought here as FTBs ourselves). Things like saying the bank will only give them a mortgage if they agree the house is worth £260,000... When I suspect what they mean is the bank will only lend them money up to the valuation and any surplus would need to come from them. I mean logically if the price did come down to £260k then they'd have at least an extra £1000 saved from the lower deposit, plus we've pushed to get it all ready to go through before the stamp duty holiday equivalent ends in Wales, which would save them an additional £2500. (I assume they'd have ensured they had this cash available to in the event that the sale was delayed they had to pay the extra tax). So we know that they've presumably got the cash to at least negotiate to £264k.

Sorry, that reply should have tagged you @mountains76!