At the present time, many investors continue to have difficulty in deducing a property’s open market value. A number of excellent sold house prices tools are available on the internet (such as Zoopla, Net House Prices, MousePrice to name a handful) but the task is all the more difficult if there have not been any recent sales in the particular vicinity of the property you are looking at. At the same time, investors are reluctant to take a ‘punt’ on booking a RICS survey on ‘tricky’ properties and lose the few hundred pounds should the property get down-valued.

One solution that we have been using is to instruct a ‘test valuation’ – this is where RICS approved surveyor assesses the property’s value in the same way as would normally be done at a fraction of the cost (anywhere between £100-200). This is ideal for the borderline cases where there are simply no comparables. Please note that – should the test valuation come back as satisfactory – lenders would require another survey to be undertaken. However, you can be fairly certain that the valuation will come back the same as it has been undertaken by an approved professional and can be shown to the surveyor.

For more information on test valuations drop Mike Fisher an email at mike.fisher@landlordfinanceltd.com