Copy article

What's going on with down valuations?

Journalist: Ruby Hinchliffe, The Telegraph

ended 01. March 2024

I know you've all been witnessing more of these. What sorts of down valuations have you seen on the ground? How is this impacting borrowers who are remortgaging after the pandemic boom in house prices? Ideally, we'd like to speak to some homeowners as well for this piece, so if you have any clients happy to speak to me about this issue then please do send them my way!

1 responses from the Newspage community

Copy all

Copy

Editor
Michelle Lawson
Director at Lawson Financial
Valuers are the epitome of business prevention. Just the smallest down-valuation can tip borrowers into a different loan to value bracket therefore increasing their payments or, worse still, meaning the mortgage cannot proceed at all and the borrower potentially losing money on fees paid as well as the processing time. It almost feels they are scared of their own shadow at times. There are a shortage of valuers, particularly in my area, which results in out of area firms going out to properties and locations that they are unfamiliar with. Also, valuers appear to down-value in an uncertain market but very rarely up-valule in a rising market although they are supposed to value on market conditions at the time. It's another debacle in the mortgage industry that really needs overhauling. More and more lenders are adopting the VM approach which is useful but also has its flaws.