House Valuation

Can any one tell me if there is a difference between a bank valuating your house as apposed to a professional house valuation??
The reason I am asking is, we are currently refinancing our home loan (better interest rate blah blah... ) and was wondering if their figures/calculations would be the same. Curious to find out what our home is worth....

Hi just out of curiosity, did the banks valuation come out higher then you expected? Thanks

Hi and welcome,

Not quite sure what you mean by a professional valuation - do you mean a real estate agent or professional valuer for the purpose of telling you how much you can sell your house for?

In any event the bank will value your property on a fire sale basis - what is it worth if they had to sell it quickly under a mortgagee sale condition. This usually less than a market valuation as you can hold out for a sensible offer if you are selling it yourself.

Also not all banks will tell you the results of your valuation.

Dale.

The bank will have a panel of valuers they use regularly, they are registered valuers. It's not actually the bank doing the valuing...and they don't stipulate what value the valuer puts on it.

The purpose of the valuation will influence the result, like Dale said if the bank values it requires the valuer to do the job with its own criteria (eg.sale within a certain period). If you get a real estate appraisal, they will use their own criteria (eg, show it as high as their conscience will allow to win your listing).

You are also able to use the same valuers the banks use for a fee of course. You may just want to buy a Sales Report for your street/suburb for under $50. It may give you a very good idea.

Great, thanks for all that...
Only had the valuation done today... so I dont know what the result is yet. And by reading this thread, I doubt they will tell me what the value is.

I just often wonder about the improvements we do to the house, is worth the effort..
The guy from the bank doing the valuation made a comment about kitchen renos. And how they only add a little bit to the value?? Surely that cant be true... If then what could possibly be worth doing? That comment has sure confused me as I thought kitchens and bathrooms were the way to go..(As long as they reallly need doing..) Am I wrong??
We had our kitchen done a few months ago, it was a pre 80's pastel peach colour . We got Caesar stone benchtops etc..
Looks great and I am really happy with it..

I think people often confuse adding value, with adding to the sale price.

What I mean is that if you buy a house for 500k and put in a new 30k kitchen, and the house is now valued at 530k, you have added no value, even though the price increases. You've only added value if the house is now worth more than 530k.

I can see what you mean. But I guess if you can save money in some ways, I guess it can help. We have some relatives that can do some trade jobs, so that saves us some labour costs...
And I suppose it also comes down to, if or how much someone will pay for your property..
Just curious about the whole process, the valuation comments freaked me out a little bit.

Well I am happy to say that I actually got a valuation figure back from the bank! And it was for exactly what I was hoping! yaaay! It would have been a bit depressing if the amount was less than what we put into the place... eek!
I wasnt expecting an answer at all! So very pleased!

Can I ask what bank you're dealing with?

We are going through the process of seeing if we can get a better deal with another bank (currently with a small credit union).

The ANZ valuation came in $70k below my conservative estimate. Put it this way... there's a 2 bedroom house just down the road (yes renovated and on slightly more land). That's on the market for $200k MORE than I was basing my conservative estimate... you can imagine my surprise when the valuation came back under what I was expecting (our place is a 4 bedroom).

At the moment we are with aussie. But I got our aussie lender to find us another one.. and now we are going with commonwealth.. which is what I actually wouldnt have thought of, but turns out to be much cheaper. The rate we will be going to will be %6.06.

That's a great rate! well done

Commonwealth Bank owns 33% of Aussie Home Loans. When Aussie HL bought Wizard Home Loans recently, CBA partnered with Aussie HL to divide up Wizard HL.


http://business.smh.com.au/business/aussie-looks-to-expand-as-cba-buys-33-stake-20080829-45qq.html
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/12/24/2454354.htm