I often get asking what to do if a surveyor devalues your house? So you might be selling your house, or looking to buying one.
The impact of the surveyor’s value depends which position you’re in.
It mostly happens when you’re actually buying and you might say you’ve agreed a price of £100,000 and you’ve applied for a mortgage. The mortgage company sends a surveyor out and they may say the house is only worth £90,000 or£ 80,000.
What do you do in this position?
My advice is try not to get into those positions.
If that’s the case – what the surveyor’s said its worth, then obviously you’ve offered too much for it in the first place. So you probably haven’t done your research. You probably overbid for the property. You may think it’s worth £100,000 and the surveyor thinks it might be worth £80 to £90,000, in which case you’re certainly overpaying.
So do your research befrehand.
Research is a big thing in property. Go on Rightmove and have a look, and also Zoopla. And make sure that you backup your values to ensure you’re paying the market value. There’s no point in overpaying, absolutely no point at all.
You can appeal to the surveyor. You can say, “Can you show me your reasons for the values?” and obviously it should have a surveyor’s report. And then you can challenge them. But you will find it very, very difficult that they will accept your findings.
In most cases, they’ll always stick to their guns. They are professionals and they don’t like that happening to them, but you can challenge them. But I would only challenge them if you’ve got concrete evidence and data. Just saying you think it’s worth more and that’s not going to work. You can only challenge them with data.
So like I say, if you think it’s worth £100,000 and you can back that up with data, then you might have a good case. But if you can’t, then you’re unlikely to succeed.
That is all I can really advise now if you’re selling property, this doesn’t really apply to you, but it’s mainly for buyers. You need to be aware and make sure you’ve done everything correct. Fortunately, I’ve never really had a devalue because I do a lot of research and make sure the values are right.
If you want to have a chat about this any time, or if you’re in that position, please feel free to give me a call 0191 486 2386. No obligation, just have a friendly chat.
