Mortgage valuation £25k below offer: worth paying for second valuation?

[StrawberryElephants]

We just put an offer on a house - over the bloody moon it was accepted. The house is chain free and vacant - we are first time buyers. The property was top end of budget at £350k but we honestly felt like after lots of looking around anyway- we had found a £370k house for an absolute steal.

However, the bank just did their valuation and listed it as £325k - £25k less than we offered. I am stunned. Estate agents are stunned. Bank obviously wont lend us the amount we requested because its not valued high enough.

The valuer said in their report that there wasn't enough evidence of similar properties selling for the same price nearby. It doesnt appear this way to us - but what do we know right!

I can pay £180 to have a second valuation done. The seller wont drop £25k off the asking (its inheritance for teenagers - sad situation, apparently they won't budge). Ive asked the estate agent to tell the sellers what happend and she suggested asking them to pay £90 (half each).

I guess what im actually asking is - any chance the valuer is wrong and have you had experience of having a property valued a second time round and getting a different awnser. Or - maybe it is what it is... Help 😪

Stamp duty is payable over a certain amount if FTB

Mortgage advisors who are free are normally affiliated to a particular bank/group of banks/EA or take a cut from the mortgage, it will cost you somehow.

If the political situation is unstable they will down value to be sure it will still be worth their outlay in a years time. In a rising market they wouldn’t be so cautious.

I think KS will be forced out soon, that will mean even more bond market volatility, unless you are paying cash or absolutely have to move I would steer clear of the property market just now.

If I got a tenner for every time someone said KS would be forced out, I could buy my house outright, no mortgage.

A long time ago now (2006) we had the same issue, so I put together a pack of comparable sales to justify the valuation and the original surveyor revalued it. I didn't have to pay again.

Then a year later the property market started to collapse and mortgage holders got lucky as the PTB swooped in to save the bankers, can"t see things playing out like that next time though, if the OP overpays they won"t be saved by lower rates.

And twenty years later we are still.in the same house, it's trebled in value and the mortgage is long paid off.

If we'd waited for the crash that was always just round the corner, we might have picked up a doer upper / forced sale for maybe 10% less than we paid, but we'd not have found the same house or equivalent cheaper because people just didn't put them up for sale in a falling market. I know, I was watching!

If the OP is confident she can cover the mortgage financially, handle being in negative equity emotionally, and sees this as a long term home, once she's in it doesn't really matter if other houses are cheaper next year.

You don"t know the value until you try to sell it, but if it has trebled in value then the OP is not in the position you were back then because they will be taking on three times the amount of debt in a rising rate environment as opposed to a cut rates to zero environment! You must see how it just dosn"t make sense to expect the same sort of return that you got (on paper) from the biggest debt bail out in history?

I do know that over time governments will always chose to gradually inflate away debt rather than crash the housing market. There's a reason deflation is more feared than inflation.

The market was actually softening in 2005. I'd been sitting on the sidelines expecting prices to fall. The reason I bought was because the BoE started cutting rates and I realised whatever they say they will they will always priorise the housing market

Hence my point that if one is buying a home for the long term trying to time the market is the short term is a mug's game. Even if you get a "cheaper" house on paper you are buying in a much thinner market where the best properties simply aren't even on offer.

You can"t "inflate away" the debt from the biggest housing bubble in history, that was from a time when property rose gradually with wage inflation, the last time people could pay down mortgages quickly with wage rises was the 1970`s, the UK government is not in control of the housing market, the bond market controls the housing market and it controls the UK government. The OP can"t afford to buy this home unless the seller reduces by 25k, that is the reality of rising debt costs.

I said all that in 2005. I was wrong.

So you think a 2008 style bailout is coming with interest rates being cut?

I don't know what shape it will take. It might be intervention somewhere else in the economy eg fuel subsidies to tweak affordability. It might be some sort of government sponsored affordibility scheme or bailout.

However they fudge it, I don't think we'll see prices fall significantly in nominal terms other than in a very thin housing market where very little sells at all.

Won"t happen, we are in a different place relative to the bond market than 2008 and the media has been full of negative stories about HTB, SO and Leasehold etc. for years now, sentiment is also in a very different place, and how could the government "tweak" things so for example the OP finds another 25k?

I think you're right to get a second valuation @StrawberryElephants

They are subjective after all and a second valuation may well come in higher. Especially with the EA providing comparables.

If it doesn't - cross that bridge when you come to it.

I love these threads, where people are desperate to pay more for something than it’s been valued at.

Precisely!!!!

It's not that anyone wants to pay more.

It's that there is a mismatch between the maximum they can borrow and the minimum the owners will accept.

They could lose the house over 25k when they feel they know the house is worth what they have offered to pay. They are prepared to pay it because they feel it is better than any other house they have seen in that location for the price.

But the valuation will be based on the house and its structural value, not on superficial items like not liking the carpets! The mortgage company only care that the house doesn’t fall down during the life of the mortgage.

She did say smaller

It is still structural - the house isnt mouldy, its been converted downstairs and upstairs to create a better space than other houses for that price, its had external modernisation, new brick driveway, new bathroom. All the things that are big and expensive have already been done for us. So we would save money long term having to not worry about doing all these things - that is why I see it as "worth it". I dont want a doer upper - i dont have time with work and family to get a house thats a project!

Also in basic sense, the size of it alone is 300-400 square feet larger than other properties of that 350k price - let alone the 325k price. Its also got large front and rear gardens - other houses that even are the same kind of size, have a matchbox size garden because they have sacrificed their back garden to build a whopper extension.

We don"t know how many other offers the house got at that price, could be zero?

It could well come in lower, we have a fast developing and escalating situation in the ME.

No harm done if the valuation does come in lower, apart from the cost of the survey. I’m getting the impression from multiple posts that you would like to see a house price crash.

Doubt the surveyor is taking the Middle East into account, it’s the current Uk housing market that counts not what may or may not happen in the ME.

The ME is driving interest rates, that affects the UK housing market.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/live/2026/mar/16/uk-mortgage-shelf-life-nosedives-interest-rates-oil-iran-inflation-news-updates