People decide to get their homes valued for one of a number of reasons. Some decide that they want to value the home to see whether it is worth putting on the market and selling up; others may wish to borrow against the equity in the home and therefore need to find out how much the property is worth; and some may simply be interested in knowing whether and by how much their property has increased in value.
When it comes to getting your home valued you need to be very careful. If you are planning to put your property up for sale you should be particularly careful, as otherwise you could find that your property is put on to the market at too high a price, which could put off potential buyers, or you could find that your property is put on the market at too low a price, which means that you will end up getting a raw deal.
When you are getting a valuation it is strongly advisable to get quotes from several local estate agents. If you use just one estate agent and go by that valuation you could be taking a gamble. This is because some state agents may decide to overvalue your home so that when it does sell they get a higher level of commission – but of course it makes it more difficult to sell because it is overpriced. Other estate agents may want to get a quick sale and may undervalue your home, which is great expect for the fact that you could lose thousands of pounds!
Most experts recommend that you get at least three different valuations on your home from different estate agents. Do bear in mind that you should avoid telling the agents that you have already had a valuation, otherwise the second my base his or her valuation on what the first estate agent said, and so on. In order to get accurate valuations from each estate agent don’t mention any figures that you have already had.
It is also a good idea to do a little homework yourself. Plenty of free newspapers and evening papers now have properties for sale, so look through the local papers and compare similar properties in the same sort of area to see how much they are going for. This will help to give you a better picture of the most accurate value of your home. You will also be able see from this whether house prices are coming down, as many have predicted that they will in the coming months.
If you are getting a valuation on your home in order to get a secured loan you should first speak to the lender. In some cases the lender may want to send out their own valuation expert, but in others the lender may ask you to get the property valued and use the value of similar properties in the area to confirm the value that you provide.
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