You are reading a single comment by @Cupcakes and its replies.
Click here to read the full conversation.
London Fixed Gear and Single-Speed is a community of predominantly fixed gear and single-speed cyclists in and around London, UK.
This site is supported almost exclusively by donations. Please consider donating a small amount regularly.
Cupcakes
I don't want to get into the whole argument about being a cunt thing but I don't agree with your take on this from a property perspective. Sorry if this makes your morning worse. On the plus side, Trump has Covid!
A £600k house in London these days is just a house. Often not a very fancy one. The fact it costs £600k is symptomatic of a housing market which has failed many people due to lack of supply, speculation and other factors which drive these bonkers prices. Given the bonkers prices, many people are going balls deep financially to buy a small house, something which doesn't seem unreasonable or excessive. Traditionally when buying their first actual house people tend to be going full gas financially already, then will slowly become more financially secure again over time.
The 'downvalueing' (or whatever @rogan called it, I don't know what the official term is) presents a fantastic negotiating opportunity! The bank or building society has paid a surveyor to value the house you want to buy, and they're saying it's not worth what you're offering. I can think of few better negotiating opportunities to be honest. One of the wonderful things about this situation is you get to blame someone else. It's not you who wants to low ball them, it's that pesky surveyor. It's a classic negotiating tactic - blaming it on the other.
All that said, I do think these 'downvaluations' are another symptom of a broken system: surveyors tend to be behind the curve on real world values, which is pretty ironic given that's what they're paid to do...
It happens every time there's an escalation in the market, particularly in property hotspots. It was happening a lot when we bought in Clapton in 2012 and since then - when surveyors and buyers and sellers were quibbling over relatively small amounts of money - prices have doubled.