Property Valuations Demystified

[TheSecret]

When at the stage of buying, one path that much be crossed is one which will establish weather the purchase of your desired property is a worthy acquisition or an unwilling risk. The property valuation is a critical stage in the home buying process for both buyer and sellers, yet knowledge for valuations, many home-owners and new buyers have lacks clarity.
The purpose of a home valuation is to establish weather the property of interest is in actual fact equal to the value of the agreed price. There are however different forms of property valuations which is where the confusion sets in, not only for new buyers but even for more experienced home-owners alike.

Estate Agent Valuation

In the UK property market it is a general misconception that a valuation carried out by an Estate Agent is golden. This in actually fact is a false belief shared by many. Estate Agents carry out Valuations on request in the hope of an instruction to market the property. In actual fact many Agents lack any real technical knowledge when it comes to the structural components of buildings and therefore base their loose valuations on cosmetics and general market trends. This is best shown in popular property shows such as Property Ladder were the Agents are invited to value a property only to give three valuations £100,000 apart! There is no wonder that it is suggested that on average Estate Agents over-value by 10% of the true market value.

Home Buyers Survey

A Homebuyers survey is the most common of all the surveys on offer and can cost over a few hundred pounds.. Once an offer on your desired property has been accepted your mortgage company will ask for a Home Buyers survey to be carried out, most of the time this will be arranged by the mortgage company themselves but on other occasions you may have to appoint an external surveyor to carry out the survey. Either way such a survey as this is carried out by a Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) qualified surveyor. An RICS surveyor has extreme technical competence and has studied building technology as a compulsory requirement and can offer an expert opinion backed up without the no-thrills opinions, and only the hard facts. As from a mortgage company’s perspective lending a home-owner is a high risk venture, and in anything high risk, brings in the experts!



Full Structural Survey

As the name suggests a full structural survey is a no holds bard, all in, no-nonsense survey which explores every last detail of a buildings material and components from defects to insects. The report should be a comprehensive document which will bring to light any potential problems or further explore a known problem which you may already be ware of. Again carried out by an RICS Surveyor a full structural survey is a recommended must before purchasing any property, you may be required by your mortgage company to have a full structural survey carried out. This is not uncommon if, upon the home buyer’s survey a potential problem is found and may require further investigation, again the mortgage company want to protect their risk. A full structural survey as you would expect costs considerably more than a home buyers and you can expect to fork out several hundred for the honour of the services of the professional Building Surveyor.


Specialised Surveys

There are many specialised surveys which cater for more specialised problems. Although the problem maybe covered in a full structural survey a specialised report is a more focused evaluation of a known problem and will be carried out by a specialist whose expertise resides in the focused area. Such problems could include damp, timber rotting, asbestos, fungi, infestations plus many other selected areas.


Online Surveys

Although you will not be able to attain a mortgage with such a survey, if you want a rough idea of the market value of a property you can leverage the use of the internet. In the golden age of the World Wide Web, there are many websites which enable you to find out the true sold prices of properties in the desired area. There are also more comprehensive sites which give valuation reports based on demographics previous sold prices and various other factors, a short report is then compiled giving a rough valuation. Although not entirely accurate, the accurate they do offer would certainly be more accurate than a valuation from three Estate Agents!